On a wide bank of the Mekong River, yellow markers and visits by surveyors show ...
LUANG PRABANG, Laos - On a wide bank of the Mekong River, yellow markers and visits by surveyors show preparations underway to build Laos’ third and largest dam on Southeast Asia’s most vital waterway.
Sceptics say the Lao government and its Vietnamese and Thai partners should wait to assess any impact on downstream fishing and farming from the recently completed Xayaburi dam, Laos’ first mainstream Mekong hydropower project. The past year has been fraught for the 2,390-km Lower Mekong, which supports 60 million people as it flows from China into Laos, past Myanmar and Thailand and through Cambodia and Vietnam.
In the past four months, Laos has also opened the first two dams on the Lower Mekong – the 1,200 MW Xayaburi and the smaller Don Sahong - after years of opposition from environmentalists. “Your participation is not just a hoop we have to jump through. It is not a rubber stamp of the process,” said An Pich Hatda, CEO of the Mekong River Commission . Others are not so sure. “It’s like they half-heartedly listen to our concerns,” said Pittipat Puangpan, a 56-year-old Thai farmer who attended another consultation last month in Thailand.
Since Xayaburi opened, the dam operator has not released data on how the pass-throughs are working, according to the MRC and others, and declined to answer questions from Reuters. The company did agree to a trip to the dam on Friday but did not allow photos or interviews with workers.Despite unanswered questions about Xayaburi, groundbreaking at Luang Prabang is likely to go forward after the consultation period ends in April, many observers say.
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