Electricity production

Hydropower dams

Climate change and dams force older residents to leave Vietnam’s Mekong Delta

At 63, Nguyen Thi Ngoc got her first full-time ‘company’ job as a security guard in Ho Chi Minh City. She’d never been to a city before taking the job in early 2021, but the former farmer, originally from the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam, ...

Nhung Nguyen

Will the Mekong River Really Become the Next South China Sea?

In recent years, the fate of Southeast Asia’s great river – the Mekong – has attracted growing international scrutiny. The Mekong faces many challenges, from the impacts of climate change and saline encroachment in its delta, to dam developments on the headwaters of the river ...

Sebastian Strangio

Cambodian mega dam’s resurrection on the Mekong ‘the beginning of the end’

A long-dormant plan to build a mega dam on the mainstream of the Mekong River in Cambodia’s northeastern Stung Treng province appears to have been revived this year, leaving locals immediately downstream of the potential sites worried and experts confounded. First studied in 2007, the 1,400-megawatt ...

Gerald Flynn, Nehru Pry

In the Mekong Basin, an ‘unnecessary’ dam poses an outsized threat

“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 ...

Gerald Flynn, Nehru Pry

Overall Mekong River flow patterns do not change–report finding

Two hydropower projects along Southeast Asia’s most important river have had measurable, but moderate, impact on water flow, sediment and fisheries, according to preliminary findings of a report by the Mekong River Commission (MRC) released last week. With roughly one year of monitoring data, the MRC ...

Vientiane Times/Asia News Network

Thai court throws out decade-long legal fight over Laos dam

A top Thai court on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit seeking to halt purchases of electricity by the country from a hydropower dam in neighbouring Laos over environmental concerns, bringing an end to a decade-long legal battle. The case brought by 37 villagers from eight provinces along ...

Reuters

Cambodia’s small-scale hydropower offers potential and risk

The stiff, rusted grate forming a metal ramp scraped its stone anchor and bent under Lounh Samnang’s weight as he clambered onto the small-scale dam he operates and maintains. Water rushed from the reservoir and gurgled through the dam’s turbine before flowing down O’Porng Morn Kraom, a ...

ANTON L. DELGADO AND NASA DIP

‘Hungry river’ phenomenon to blame for severe erosion of Mekong River banks in Laos

Upstream dams and sand mining have caused significant erosion along the Mekong River in western Laos, according to experts, devastating riparian communities in the impoverished Southeast Asian nation with high waters and powerful currents. But residents of those communities say they believe that other issues are to ...

RFA Lao; Translated by Max Avary for RFA Lao. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Four years after Laos’ worst dam catastrophe, survivors still live in limbo

Four years after a dam collapse that caused Laos’ worst flooding in decades, survivors who lost everything say they are tired of waiting for the government to provide them with new homes and arable land. On the night of July 23, 2018, billions of cubic feet ...

RFA Lao; Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Eugene Whong

Laos dam leaks normal, says Thai partner

Reported leaks at the sides of the Nam Theun 1 Hydropower dam under construction in Laos were not a cause for concern and were normal when a dam began storing water, Electricity Generating Plc president Thepparat Theppitak said on Monday. EGCO, a subsidiry of the Electricity ...

YUTHANA PRAIWAN

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