A break in a critical waterway shut down a hydro-electric dam in southern Laos and raised questions about the quality of construction at the facility that sends most of the power it generates to Vietnam.
While officials said the Dec. 16 break in the Xekaman 3 facility’s penstock posed no threat to people living downstream, it marked the second breakdown in the tunnel that channels water to the power turbine, RFA’s Lao Service has learned.
Myanmar Rivers Network has called for the suspension of construction on mega dam projects, a special economic zone and extraction of value-added mineral resources until a federal agreement is signed.
At a press conference at the Orchid Hotel on December 7, the network released a statement saying that the respective governments and companies must give full compensations to villagers who had been moved by force because of previous dam construction projects.
Over 70 companies across 14 countries have invested more than US$700 million in the Thilawa special economic zone, but local residents affected by the project are still campaigning to have the next phase halted until issues around resettlement, compensation and environmental impact are resolved.
China’s ambassador to Myanmar met on Friday with residents forced to relocate for the construction of the controversial China-backed Myitsone Dam project in Kachin state in a bid to gain local support for the restart of the project, a local resident and state official said.
China wants to resume construction of the U.S. $3.6-billion hydropower project, which was temporarily halted by former President Thein Sein in 2011, Ambassador Hong Liang told Kachin Chief Minister Khent Aung and his cabinet during his first visit to the state.
The U.N.’s human rights envoy to Cambodia on Sunday promised villagers in Stung Treng province who are set to be displaced by the construction of the Lower Sesan 2 hydropower dam that she would raise their plight with the government, a village representative said.
Puth Khoeun, a representative for about 240 families who have rejected compensation offers for land they will lose to make way for the massive energy project, said Rhona Smith spent more than an hour hearing the grievances of 60 residents during a meeting in Sesan district’s Srekor commune.
Hkawn San is one of about 5,000 people who were resettled by Chinese contractors from the catchment area behind the projected Myitsone Dam, which Myanmar President Thein Sein abruptly and unexpectedly cancelled in 2011, shortly after he took office. Like those in far too many other resettlement villages, Hkawn San is not happy.
“The house here has problems, we get barely enough food to survive, but we do not get enough money, so people have to go around trying to find day work,” she said, sitting in front of her new but already decaying house in Aung Myint Thar, one of the two resettlement villages located north of Myitkyina, the capital of Myanmar’s Kachin State.
The Mytsone Dam was meant to be one of the world’s largest, to be built at the confluence of the Mali Hka and the N’Mai Hka, the two streams that form the Irrawaddy, Myanmar’s most fabled river. The Irrawaddy Valley is considered to be the birthplace of Burmese civilization . It is now a bone of contention between Myanmar, with whom the cancellation was enormously popular, and China, which is seeking to restart construction.
Cambodia’s Lower Sesan 2 (LS2) hydropower project brings about concerns to the locals, either those refusing to move or those accepting the resettlement deals. According to the project’s environmental impact assessment report, 4,785 people from seven villages must relocate from four communes in the reservoir area. It is estimated that 78,000 people upstream would lose access to migratory fish, and 22,000 people immediately downstream would be negatively affected by changes in river hydrology, water quality and fish numbers.
Thousands of workers, mostly Chinese, are hustling working on the Lower Sesan 2 (LS2) dam site in Northeast Cambodia, and nearly 40% of their work is complete. The US$816 million project was approved by Cambodia’s Council of Ministers in 2012. However, in November 2014, the dam construction was stopped due to environmental controversy and opposition from communities and some NGOs, but has been re-started since March 2015. And, as construction has resumed, the communities concerns have been reprised and the trouble has restarted.
