14:29, 19-Nov-2021
China Huaneng holds open house event at Cambodia hydropower station

China Huaneng Group Co., Ltd. recently held an open house event at the Lower Sesan 2 Hydropower Station in Cambodia to showcase the country's largest hydropower project and the company's efforts in fulfilling its overseas social responsibilities.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-11-19/C ... index.html

Mongabay Series: Mekong dams
In the Mekong Basin, an ‘unnecessary’ dam poses an outsized threat
by Gerald Flynn, Nehru Pry on 14 September 2022

-A dam being built in Laos near the border with Cambodia imperils downstream communities and the Mekong ecosystem as a whole, experts and affected community members say.
-The Sekong A dam will close off the Sekong River by the end of this year, restricting its water flow, blocking vital sediment from reaching the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, and cutting off migration routes for a range of fish species.
-Experts say the energy to be generated by the dam — 86 megawatts — doesn’t justify the negative impacts, calling it “an absolutely unnecessary project.”
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn is a fellow.

SIEM PANG, Cambodia — “I remember seeing a buffalo, its head tied to a floating barrel, drifting down the river,” says Pheng Sisuwath, gesturing to the Sekong River from his stilt house in Cambodia’s northeastern province of Stung Treng.

That was four years ago, when one of the auxiliary dams of the Xe Pian Xe-Namnoy hydropower project collapsed on July 23, 2018, killing at least 49 people and displacing more than 7,000 people from 19 villages in Attapeu province, Laos. The wall of water unleashed by the collapsed saddle dam surged over the Cambodian border, destroying the homes, farms and livelihoods of another 15,000 people.

Now, in this village less than 40 kilometers (25 miles) downriver from the Laos-Cambodia border, news of a new “killer dam” nearing completion just outside Cambodia is prompting fresh fears of disaster.

Scarcely 2 km (1.2 mi) north of the Cambodian border in Attapeu province’s Sanamxay district, the same district where the Xe-Namnoy collapse happened, Vietnamese state-owned Song Da 6 began construction on the 86-megawatt Sekong A hydropower dam (alternately known as the Xekong A or Lower Sekong A) around December 2020.

Experts have warned that the dam will close off the Sekong River by the end of this year, restricting when and how much water will flow from the 480-km (300-mi) tributary to the Mekong River, while blocking vital sediment from reaching the Mekong Delta in Vietnam and cutting off migration routes for a range of fish species.

Sisuwath, who heads up the fishing committee of Kang Speu village, in Siem Pang district, says the district’s estimated 25,000 residents are already acutely attuned to the impact upstream dams. “Since the ’90s, Laos has released water from its dams and we’ve had floods every year since, we’ve lost a lot to the water,” he says, noting that the flooding stopped after the Xe-Namnoy collapsed. “If there’s no dam, the river’s waters flow naturally, but when they dam the river, they release water when it rains heavily and we’re flooded far beyond natural levels.”
Full story: https://news.mongabay.com/2022/09/in-th ... ed-threat/

Cambodia’s fishing industry under threat as catches shrink
By Try Thaney
27 February 2023 at 8:52
STUNG TRENG & KRATIE, CAMBODIA – Communities that relied on fishing in the Mekong River along the Cambodia-Laos border have seen their catches – and incomes – drop dramatically since work started on the Don Sahong hydropower dam in Laos.

Many have now given up fishing, and while some initiatives were launched to help villagers shift to aquaculture, not everyone succeeded due to a lack of long-term support and technical knowledge.

“I could not catch enough fish anymore,” said Sok Den, a 40-year-old fisherman from Koh Sneng community in Stung Treng province in the north of Cambodia. “All types of fish stocks have decreased in recent years.”

His close-knit community was once vibrant and bustling with people making a living from fishing. But now, that once-thriving industry is in decline. Den saw how the situation went from bad to worse.

He used to earn up to US$1,900 per fishing season. But by 2018 his income had dropped to less than $1,000. When he could no longer afford fuel for his boat, he was forced to quit fishing.

Having no other choice, he experimented with fish farming after receiving training from a local non-governmental organization. But he was unable to make it work.

“The association taught us [the aquaculture techniques], but there was no support like money or materials after the training. We had to buy the juvenile fish ourselves,” he said.

Located on an island in the middle of the Mekong River, Koh Sneng commune is about 60 kilometers from the 260-megawatt Don Sahong dam. Construction of the dam was started in the southern Champasak province of Laos in 2016, and the dam is less than two kilometers from the border with Cambodia.

The dam became the second completed Mekong mainstream dam in 2020, three months after the 1,285-megawatt Xayaburi dam was commissioned in northern Laos.

Most of the electricity generated by the two dams is exported to Laos’ neighbors, Thailand and Cambodia. Seven other dams are planned on the mainstream Mekong as the Lao government taps the economic benefits from the country’s abundant free-flowing rivers and streams.

Den and other fishermen in his community link the declining fish numbers to the Don Sahong dam. But so far, there has been no scientific study to confirm this link.
In full: https://www.mekongeye.com/2023/02/27/ca ... es-shrink/

More on the Sekong A dam, currently being constructed in Laos, close to the border with Cambodia:

Perspective | Latest Mekong Dam Will Produce Little Power But Much Environmental Harm
Dam critics urge national governments to halt project on important Mekong tributary.
By Stefan Lovgren, special to Circle of Blue – July 13, 2023

Southeast Asia’s Mekong River, known as the most productive river system on the planet, sustains the livelihoods of tens of millions of people through fishing and farming. For years, the world’s largest inland fishery has also been under assault from a frenzy of reckless dam construction that is often driven by political and private interests without considering environmental costs.

Thirteen major dams now control the Mekong’s main stem and hundreds of lesser structures dot the broader watershed, but the most egregious current example of this ecological scorn is a small dam being built in Laos on the Sekong River, the only largely free-flowing major tributary remaining in the six-country basin.

Known as Sekong A, this dam near the Cambodia border would cut off over 90 percent of the 300-mile-long Sekong from the Mekong’s main stem, blocking migrations of numerous fish species and impeding the crucial delivery of sediments to farmlands downstream.

Despite the environmental cost it is sure to inflict, the dam, if completed, will produce a measly 86 megawatts of electricity, a small fraction of the region’s energy demand and an amount that observers say could easily be replaced by solar power.

Because of the potential harm, Brian Eyler, who monitors dam developments in the Mekong as director of the Southeast Asia program at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C., calls Sekong A “a killer dam” and “one of the worst ideas for the Mekong.”

Biodiversity at Risk

The project has long been shrouded in secrecy and outside access to the dam site is limited. Construction, which is carried out by a Vietnamese state-owned company, Song Da 6, appears to have begun in late 2020. However, no formal construction contract was put in place. Eyler says the dam is “essentially being built illegally.”

The current status of the project is unclear. Satellite images suggest that construction has not progressed in recent months and that the river is not yet closed off. The onset of the rainy season, which just began in the region, will likely pause any construction activities for several months.

If construction does proceed, the potential environmental damage is immense. The Sekong rises in the Vietnamese highlands and runs through Laos and Cambodia before joining the Mekong near the Cambodian town of Stung Treng. Along with the Sesan and Srepok, two rivers that come into Cambodia from Vietnam, it forms the critical 3S basin. Together, these three rivers deliver as much as a quarter of the Mekong’s flow and sustain a large percentage of the more than 1,000 fish species in the watershed, where close to two million tons of fish are caught every year.

The impact of dam construction on the other 3S rivers is already evident. Cambodia’s Lower Sesan 2 dam, which began operating in 2019, essentially blocked access to both the Sesan and Srepok. A study recently published in the journal Scientific Reports revealed a serious decline in fish species in those two rivers. In contrast, fish diversity improved in Sekong, the basin with the fewest dams. There the number of fish species grew from 33 to 56.

The study’s lead author, Ratha Sor of CheaSim University of Kamchaymea in Cambodia, says the findings show that a free-flowing Sekong “is vital to sustaining future food webs, biodiversity, fisheries, and food security in the Lower Mekong basin.”
Full article: https://www.circleofblue.org/2023/world ... ntal-harm/

Xekong 1A (Sekong A) Downstream Dam Hydropower Info by Hobo Maps

This project is also known as - Lower Xekong, Xekong 1A, Xekong A, Xekong 1, Sekong 1, Sekong A, Sekong 1A, South Sekong A, Xekong Downstream and Sekong Downstream.

Xekong 1A dam is located on the Xekong (Sekong) river in Attapeu Province of southern Lao PDR. The project is southwest of Attapeau town not far above the Cambodian border.

Project site location coordinates are - 14°35'57.0"N 106°33'15.0"E (14.599171, 106.554175) shown as red marker on satellite image below south of Sanamxai and very close to the Cambodia border.

https://www.hobomaps.com/Xekong1AdownstreamDamInfo.html