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Read this report in: MANDARIN | THAI

More than six years after flash floods first hit this and other villages in north-eastern Cambodia, drowning people and sweeping away homes and livelihoods, families living along the Sesan river live in fear of the ill effects flowing from a dam across the border in Vietnam.

But unlike in 1996 when they were caught unawares, villagers in Ratanakiri province are more vigilant in facing the troubles they attribute to the Yali Falls dam in Vietnam -- erratic releases of water that caused flash floods when the dam was being built, followed by fluctuations in the river's flow after it became fully operational in 2001.

This time, they are holding community meetings and joining protests to speak out against plans by Vietnam to build more dams on the Sesan river, one of the largest tributaries of the Mekong river that reaches Cambodia after flowing through Vietnam.

After completing the Yali Falls dam, located 70 kilometres upstream from the Cambodia-Vietnam border, Vietnam reportedly started work in June 2002 on the 273 million dollar 273-mw Sesan 3 dam project, 20 km downstream from Yali Falls. It has plans to construct the 320-mw Sesan 4 dam in 2004.

"All river users in this region have rights, not just hydro developers, argues Kim Sangha, coordinator of the Sesan River Protection Network. "Those rights must be enshrined in a clear set of rules and procedures for dam building which take local people into account."

The roots of the villagers' anger run deep.

Villagers in Ratanakiri, like those in neighbouring Stung Treng province to the west, recall how in 1996 an elderly woman was swept away by gushing water from the Sesan. Later that year, a three-year-old girl drowned when the river suddenly swelled.

Villagers and activists blame those flash floods on the large amounts of water discharged during the construction of the Yali Falls' 720 mw hydroelectric dam in Vietnam, and also from its 64-km reservoir.

"My two hectares of rice paddies were rotten, fishing nets, over ten chickens, one boat and vegetables were ruined by irregular water levels caused by the dam releases," 52-year-old Ha Si Nan from Kachhorn village says of her experience in 2001.

Reports from local and international NGOs say at least 36 people have drowned due to erratic releases of water from the Yali dam, and some 50,000 Cambodian villagers affected.

Higher-than-normal floods and lower-than-normal dry season flows have confused and worried locals and disrupted the river's ecology.

Villagers like Thorng Penh are surprised that flooding occurs during the dry and rainy seasons. "I was born here and have lived here for over 50 years but I have never seen such strange flooding like this," she says. "(In 2001), four Kheng minorities tried to cross the river, but their boat overturned and all of them died as water rose quickly."

One villager recalls that the Sesan used to be a source of drinking water, but now the water is murky. Drinking it causes pains in the throat, chest and stomach. Bathing in the river causes skin rashes and sores.

Some Cambodian authorities appear to downplay the dam's impact. As Muong Poy, Ratanakiri's co-governor, puts it, "The situation (involving) water releases from the Yali Falls dam is better (now) than in 1996 and 1997 and the problem it causes among the people downstream in Cambodia is not as serious now."

Chan Bun Thoeun, deputy director of Ratanakiri Service for Water Resources and Meteorology, adds: "Flooding disasters don't occur any more and water quality is not also bad. The Vietnamese use proper technical equipment at the time of releasing water."

But these do little to reassure angry Cambodian villagers, especially with plans for other Vietnamese dams along the Sesan. "One dam has caused enough problems. I have lost my rice fields, animals and there are less fish to catch in the river. Do they want us all to die?" news reports quote one villager from Stung Treng as saying.

Together with activists, villagers want a stop to dam-building in Vietnam until a public hearing is held to discuss the impacts of these projects.

Foreign aid watchdog Probe International, along with the U.S.-based International Rivers Network (IRN) and other activists, brought its case against Electricite de Vietnam (EVN) to the World Bank, asking it to investigate the company for its failure to mitigate and compensate for damages the Yali dam has caused.

"As a major donor to EVN, the World Bank has a responsibility to ensure that its client-utility is held accountable for the environmental damages and economic losses incurred by downstream communities," they said in a letter to World Bank president James Wolfensohn dated October 10, 2002.

Critics also say the Phnom-Penh based MRC, composed of the lower Mekong countries of Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, failed to coordinate members' actions that could have prevented destruction and death in north-eastern Cambodia.

Among others, MRC maintains that at the time of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the Yali project in the early nineties, Cambodia was still embroiled in internal conflict and was unsafe to visit. The EIA for the Yali Falls dam was conducted by the Swiss company Electrowatt Engineering.

MRC chief Joern Kristensen has said that the commission helped steer the creation of a Vietnam-Cambodia panel to discuss "the environment impact, management, adverse effects, the (Yali) dam's water release and future construction".

"MRC cannot dictate the direction or decisions that the committee makes. That is the responsibility of the two governments concerned," he wrote to a Cambodian newspaper last year.

Villagers on the Vietnamese side have not been spared the effects of the Yali Falls dam project—and most probably future projects too. Vietnamese affected by flooding have been resettled, says the Centre for Natural Resources and Environment Studies, a Vietnamese research organisation.

But it said the resettlement and compensation varied, with ethnic minorities receiving less assistance than Kinh (Vietnamese) people. About 40 percent of the 6,800 people relocated because of the dam were Kinh.

Uneven distribution of cash and other provisions were reported, but as one ethnic villager told the centre: "We take what they give us."

"We like the new house, although it is small. But we are all hungry because there is no land left for us to cultivate to feed the family," another Vietnamese villager was quoted as saying.

Pouv Savuth of 'Reach Theany' newspaper in Phnom Penh wrote this story under the IPS-Rockefeller media fellowship programme 'Our Mekong: A Vision amid Globalisation'