The dam from Lao's point of view

The ride to Don Sahong to see the Hou Sahong channel (dam site) was quite a trip! The area of the Mekong was empty and quiet - no fisherman out now because it's not quite dry season, another month and the water will below enough for the big fish to be caught again. I am told that the river is packed with fishing boats. But for now, things are still pretty wet and brown, only a few boats show up on the horizon, shuttling people around to different islands. A light drizzle clouds the dotted islands and you can see the silhouette of the hills of Cambodia in the distance.

Mathieu, a Belgian who has lived on Don Det for the last 5 years and is fluent in Lao, is the one who helpd me get all of this done. When I met him and told him I wanted to see the site, he was interested. He said many engineers and government people have been through talking about this dam, and he wanted to know what the deal was with this channel also. So he was eager to organize a trip and get a day off from his busy guest house, Little Eden. He and a friend, Daren (a friend and fellow expat), and I asked a man living nearby to take us across to Don Sahong and show us where the dam would be.

The trip to the proposed site:

As remote as Don Kom is, it has electricity! Because of its high level in relation to other islands, it was the best place to put cell towers, hence the electricity lines. Not even touristy Don Det has electricity 24/7, Don Det only has it via generators (but it should be coming soon, they say).

The man that lived at the south end of this island took us on his small wooden boat over across a confluence of the two biggest channels onto Don Sahong, which is an island that creates the Hou Sahong channel (along with the island, Don Sadam).

We got off the boat on a sandy spit of Don Sahong. As we walked onto the small island, we passed a tiny village of six different families. They lived in bamboo thatched houses, some without walls. They were sitting under their huts avoiding the rain, along with their water buffalo, ducks, and pigs. The whole group looked stunned that we were there on their little island. But I think they have seen more and more outsiders come in and check out this channel.... they are growing more and more aware of something happening here that might mean a move for them, sponsored by the government. This would be a great thing for them - give them new houses and even put them closer to their rice paddies on the adjacent island.

So we walked through the jungle on this island, past some cement spheres for soil samples that have been done already here, to the site of where the dam would be.

The Lao cop asked that I not name him or use his picture in my article, and Mathieu explained that it is because he is a policeman and generally scared of the Lao government. They don't want to be accountable for anything. So that was frustrating since he is one of my few primary sources, but that's just the way it goes.

Using the photo on my blog is fine.

Interview:
The Lao cop who fishes in the season also, as do most men in this part of Lao, said he welcomes a dam. A dam should mean free electricity for the residents in this area. He thinks a dam (or he was calling it a turbine, I still need to see if it's a dam or a turbine) will not kill too many fish. He thinks that the fish will be able to use many of the other channels in the area when they are migrating up or down. He doesn't mind the dam at all because he will also just move his traps (bamboo traps to catch fish coming back downstream) to a different channel. When asked if this channel was special, he said it was because it's calmer and doesn't have any waterfalls on it. Some of the bigger fish use this channel for that reason.
So I thought, well doesn't this mean that this channel is crucial to big fish, and yes it is, but there is also a channel on the other side of Don Sahong that is very similar, he said, so they can just use that channel.
The Lao also mentioned a grate that the company would put in before the channel started to keep the fish from entering the channel from the start. People could fish off the grate. I asked if he really thought that would work and he said yes (keep in mind this is all through Mathieu's translating).
When asked if he was worried about crowding, he said that wasn't an issue and that people would just share traps and work as teams, like they already do. Mathieu told me that fisherman are very communal here and work together and split profits, a different mentality than that in the west.

The villagers, as I said, would be elated to move.

As we left the site and got back in the boat, I noticed to my right a tiny island with a Buddhist monastery almost hidden behind the brush and trees, the only thing on that island. It peeked out of the top and I saw two monks walking down to the river to boat somewhere. It was so tranquil and solitary there, and I couldn't help but think about the disruption a dam would bring to an oasis like that. But of course everyone reserves the right to develop their land and their power sources and have electricity too.

In the village of Nakasang which is the biggest village in the area of the islands, a woman buys and sells fish.

My thoughts:

I don't know what to think of the recurring trend from Lao - that they don't mind a dam coming because fish will find other ways to get upriver. I know that from Ian Baird's study, this channel is extremely crucial for fish. Even the Lao say it's a special waterway, but they don't seem to be concerned about it at all. They just think the fish will figure it out. Meanwhile, scientists and researchers are coming in and trying to maintain the Lao's livelihood of fishing and stop a huge food shortage, but inherently stopping the Lao from reaping the benefits of a hydroelectric dam in their neighborhood. It is obvious that more studies need to be done with the Hou Sahong channel as well as adjacent channels to see if the fish can use them to migrate upriver.

I am in Phnom Penh now and I think it will be very interesting to get some Cambodian views on the project. Pictures to come soon. Thanks for keeping up with my reporting.

Mr. Pon on Khong Island

After an overnight bus and a night in Pakse, southern Laos, Caroline and Carrie and I have now reached the Cambodian border of Laos, in the Khone Falls region and Siphandone (means 4,000 islands) in the Mekong River. This picture is our sleeper bus, where we were given the 4-person back of the bus to spread out on, it was hilarious but probably the worst night so far in my traveling because I never stopped rolling around.

It is brutally hot and the sun is strong! From the island we slept on last night, Don Khong, and I took the motorbike to Don Det via Don Som which was a 3 hour ride. To take the bike I ride it on a plank onto a tiny wooden boat, and then ride off and onto some dirt trails onto the next "ferry crossing." It turned out to be pretty treacherous because it rained about 50 liters per square meter last night. I was basically legs out on either side of the bike and walking it through mud so I wouldn't get stuck. My legs were caked with mud and villagers through the rice paddies were laughing at me because I obviously couldn't do it as smoothly as they could. There were no road on Don Som, but there were electicity lines. The islands have just gotten a few hours of electricity a day from a source on the Bolaven Plateau on the mainland. I am still not really sure how they have it.

While on Don Khong, the first and biggest island, I spoke with the famous Mr. Pon, who is the guest house tycoon of the island and the only English speaker. I asked him about the Don Sahong dam. He said that Cambodia's mad and wants 20 to 30% of the electricity from the dam. He said he doesn't think the dam will affect Laotians because the dam will be in the Hou Sahong channel, only 10 meters wide, while the Mekong is about 14 km wide in this area. He said it won't affect his tourism either because the falls will still be there. He said fish will still be able to migrate up through the other channels. In Laos, people want electricity and they need something to export since they ar landlocked and have nothing. This could be electricity, explained Pon.

These comments do not match up with the information I have from Ian Baird and the MRC, etc. What I know is that the Hou Sahong channel is the only channel that the big fish can migrate up in the low water season, and also the rapids in the other channels are too dangerous for them. The Lao government has even recognized the importance of this channel and banned fishing on it various different times in the 60s 70s and 80s.

When I sit out on the edge of the Mekong now, there isn't much going on. There are few fisherman with nets catching tiny cyprinids. The water is too high right now as the wet season just ended and the fish are all in the Tonle Lake area in Cambodia spawning. Come dry season months, the fish will begin their migration north into Laos and Thailand to feed. The fisherman are just idly waiting here in the Khone falls area, catching tiny fish in rice paddies and subsisting off mostly rice.

I am excited to get into the field now. I have met a Belgian who owns a guest house here who has taken an interest in the subject now himself and he is going to take me to the actual site of the dam and take me to different village chiefs so I can get interviews, if all goes according to plan. Everyone moves around by small wooden boat here and some places are dangerous to maneuver because the rapids get so big. Matthew is going to have to do some planning for us and we might have to take a few different boats to get down to Don Sahong which is 3 islands south of here.

*Gumboot sighting - woman in rice paddy sloshing round in gumboots and kindly gave me a long sleeved white button shirt when she saw my skin burning today.

Dam Will Block Migratory Fish on Southern Mekong Which Would Lead to Massive Food Shortage

While I am in the Mekong River Basin, I have decided to research hydroelectric dams on the Mekong River and the possible Don Sahong dam, which would be built on the Laos - Cambodia border near the Khone Falls area. The dam would provide electricity to the majority of southern Laos and the remainder then sold to Thailand.

The problem is that the dam could threaten food security of millions of people in Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand. An August report by Dr. Ian G. Baird, an affiliate of the Polis Project on Ecological Governance at the University of Victoria, Canada, and a leading expert on fisheries in the Khone Falls area of Southern Laos, shows that the Don Sahong Dam would block the migration of many important commercial fish species that pass through the Khone Falls area throughout the year.

The paper states that “fisheries losses in the Mekong region from the Don Sahong Dam could negatively impact the nutritional status of hundreds of thousands or even millions of people dependent on these fisheries, thus decreasing the health of a large human population, especially in parts of Laos, Cambodia and Thailand where nutritional standards are already low.”

The Mekong River Commission, which is an intergovernmental body between Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnan, has accused China of blatantly disregarding the nations downstream with its Mekong dam plans, but nothing has changed and China is considering 12 new dams. Since the building of the first Chinese dam, the Irradawy dolphins and manatees have become almost instinct on the river.

MRC in Vientiane, Laos.













The Mekong River is the 10th-longest river in the world and the 7th longest in Asia. It flows from the Tibetan Plateau through China's Yunnan province, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. China has already built three dams on the mainstream Mekong with another 12 under consideration. There are 5 under consideration in Cambodia and 3 in Laos.

In two weeks a full strategic environmental assessment will be released by Larry Haas, policy and strategy adviser for sustainable hydropwer, of the Mekong River Commission. This will cover the 11 proposed dams on the Mekong mainstream (excluding China's).

http://www.mrcmekong.org/

I spent all of today at the headquarters of the Mekong River Commission, reading reports in the library, speaking with environmental analysts at lunch, and speaking with Mr. Haas. Tonight I leave on a night bus to Pakse in the south, and from there get to Siphandone, where the dam will be built, which is also known as 4,000 islands, home to the Irradawy dolphins! I will update when I have more.