Cambodia: Kith Meng Backs Plans for Three Hydropower Dams

Cambodia: Kith Meng Backs Plans for Three Hydropower Dams

Kith Meng, one of the country's wealthiest businessmen, is behind three
proposed hydropower dams, the Council of Ministers has confirmed, including
what would be the largest by far on the main stream of the Mekong River in
Cambodia.

The Royal Group chairman, whose business interests range from ANZ Royal Bank
to cellular service provider Cellcard, already has a stake in the Lower
Sesan II dam in Stung Treng province. The 400-megawatt hydropower project is
nearing completion after being plagued by accusations of illegal logging,
forced evictions and heavy damage to local fish stocks.

An October 31 letter from the Council of Ministers obtained by reporters
links the company to three other proposed dams: the 900-MW Stung Treng; the
190-MW Lower Sekong, also in Stung Treng, and the 2,600-MW Sambor dam in
Kratie province.

All three projects have been on the government's drawing board for years,
part of its plans to lower some of the highest electricity prices in
Southeast Asia.

In its letter, the Council of Ministers "agrees in principle" to let the
Royal Group sign a memorandum of understanding with the Mines and Energy
Ministry to "thoroughly conduct" pre-feasibility, feasibility and social and
environmental impact studies of the three dams.

After inviting professional and public input on the studies, it says the
government "will decide whether to permit investment in the three projects"
before allowing Royal Group to enter contracts with Vietnam or Cambodia "as
needed."

Neither the ministry nor Royal Group responded to questions about whether
the memorandum has since been signed and what, if any, progress had been
made on the required studies.

The proposed Stung Treng and Sambor dams would be the first to straddle the
main stream of the Mekong in Cambodia and would dwarf the Lower Sesan II,
which will be the largest dam in the country when finished.

The Sambor, the largest of the proposed dams, has environmental protection
groups especially worried. U.S.-based International Rivers said its
construction would be a "tragic and costly mistake."

Critics warn that the dam would block major fish migrations between southern
Laos and the Tonle Sap lake, destroy fish pools and upend the Mekong's
natural ecology, jeopardizing fisheries vital to the country's economy and
food security. It could also destroy critical habitat of the endangered
Irrawaddy dolphin.

Maureen Harris, International Rivers' Southeast Asia program director, said
Cambodia's future dams on the mainstream Mekong had to be considered in
tandem with those upstream in Laos and China.

"With dams built on the Mekong we are also looking at not just the impacts
of any one project, but the cumulative impacts of all the dams being built
or proposed on mainstream. A number of studies, including a Strategic
Environmental Assessment commissioned by the MRC [Mekong River Commission]
in 2010, predict that the cumulative impacts of the Sambor dam on a Mekong
dam cascade will be severe," she said by email.

The same study predicted that the Sambor dam could displace as many as
20,000 people, on par with the evictions of Phnom Penh's Boeng Kak community
in the last decade, which triggered a five-year freeze on new lending to
Cambodia by the World Bank in protest.

Ms. Harris said the Council of Ministers letter was a bad sign that the
government was pushing ahead with the proposed new dams despite the
remaining concerns surrounding the Lower Sesan II, and the company backing
it.

"Royal Group's involvement in those projects does not help provide assurance
that social and environmental concerns will be effectively addressed.
Concerns over the Lower Sesan II dam's very serious impacts, not just in
Cambodia but also in neighbouring countries, have never been adequately
acknowledged or addressed, including a study predicting 9.3 percent decrease
in fish stocks across the entire Mekong Basin," she said.

And that was for a dam on a tributary of the Mekong.

The hundreds of families living in the way of the Lower Sesan II were not
consulted before construction began, and are being forced off their land in
exchange for compensation that NGOs say falls below market value.

Many fear that the inland relocation sites chosen for them will make for
harder living than their riverine homes. The going offer for the dam's
evictees is a new plot of land for a home, five hectares of farmland and the
choice between a free house or $6,000 cash. Though some are still holding
out, many have taken the deal, worried that the alternative is to receive
nothing at all.

The project has also been dogged by claims that Royal Group's rights to
clear trees from the planned reservoir is being used to launder timber
logged illegally beyond the reservoir's designated boundaries.

As with the Lower Sesan II, Royal Group is unlikely to move ahead with the
other dams without a foreign partner.

According to International Rivers, Vietnamese media reported in 2011 that
state-owned Electricity Vietnam reached a deal with Cambodia's Mines and
Energy Ministry for a joint study of the Lower Sekong dam. It's not known
whether the utility is still involved or whether it ever carried out the
study. The company was also involved with the Lower Sesan II before selling
off either all or most of its stake in 2012.

Royal Group ended up partnering with China's Hydrolancang International
Energy on the Lower Sesan II.

A host of Vietnamese and Chinese companies have also been tied to the Stung
Treng and Sambor dams. International Rivers says the Mines and Energy
Ministry hired the U.S.-based Natural Heritage Institute in 2013 to redesign
the latter, after China Southern Power Grid pulled out of the project,
describing itself as a "responsible company," but the full results were
never made public.

In Stung Treng, provincial government spokesman Men Kung said this week that
the governor informed his staff last month that new studies on the Stung
Treng and Lower Sekong dams would start soon.

"I don't know the details, but I know they are on the Mekong and Sekong
rivers," he said.

Chum Huor, a member of local advocacy group Youth for Social and
Environmental Protection, has helped organize protests against the proposed
Sambor dam over the government's opaque planning process. He said he worried
that the Council of Ministers' recent approval of new studies foreshadowed a
repeat of the Lower Sesan II project, which started construction on the
heels of studies that local communities were given no time to consider or
comment on.

"We have an experience with the Lower Sesan II, when the government sent
officials to study the project and it sent machines there at the same time
or soon after," he said. "They said they would study it before starting
construction, but they did not have a detailed consultation with the people
and the affected communities first."

Mr. Huor said he would also organize protests against any banks that helped
fund the proposed dams.

Last year, rights groups revealed that the International Finance
Corporation, the private lending arm of the World Bank, helped finance the
construction of the Lower Sesan II.

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Link to Original Article:
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/kith-meng-backs-plans-for-three-hydropowe
r-dams-124528/

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John Diecker
APT Consulting Group Co., Ltd.

www.aptthailand.com