Rivers and lakes

Mekong floodwaters have risen sharply this week and have already surpassed the levels seen at this time of the year during the devastating floods of 2011. In Phum Thom commune in Kien Svay district in Kandal province, local residents observed floodwaters rising about two meters between ...

About 30 residents of a planned community on the eastern outskirts of Phnom Penh gathered around the picturesque lake that forms the center of their neighborhood Monday to prevent its developer, a former opposition lawmaker, from reclaiming the land to construct condos. The residents, many of ...

More than 300 villagers who live around Boeng Samraong lake in Phnom Penh’s Prek Pnov district protested for a third day straight Sunday against a private company they say has been filling the lake with sand, threatening the livelihoods of local rice farmers and fishermen. The ...

Officials involved in negotiating compensation offers between the developers of the Lower Sesan II dam and affected villagers have kept a portion of the money paid out to 12 families for themselves, according to an official. Duong Pov, Stung Treng provincial administration director, claimed that a ...

Villagers who will be displaced if the controversial Lower Sesan II dam is built called on the developers yesterday to postpone construction for five years, allowing time for a comprehensive resettlement scheme to be devised. But a government official dismissed their request as “beyond the pale”, ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen marked National Fish Day on Tuesday in Kompong Chhnang province by urging fishermen to refrain from illegal fishing and report lawbreakers. The government bans fishing in the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers during the breeding season to allow fish stocks to ...

Looking out from his house, held up by three-meter stilts on a peninsula that juts into Boeng Tompun lake, Chan Sokhom can see the sand inching closer to him every day. Within a few years, the sand will likely reach his doorstep. By then, Mr. Sokhom ...

Representatives of fishing communities say illegal operations are critically threatening the nation’s fisheries. Corruption and collusion between authorities and illegal fishermen are at the root of the problem, they say. More than 100 representatives from these communities met in Phnom Penh Friday, in an effort to find ...

Officials from the Ministry of Mines and Energy yesterday met with villagers in Ratanakkiri province’s Taveng district about a gold mine they allege violates the law and introduces toxic chemicals into the nearby Sesan River. ...

More than 100 families living in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district have filed a complaint with authorities, claiming a rubber giant – already accused of illegal logging – filled in two natural lakes, provincial officials said yesterday. Villagers, along with government officials, say Vietnamese company Hong Anh Gai ...

A company ordered to cease its sand-dredging operation along the Sesan River in Ratanakkiri province after it was accused of illegally searching for gold is now defying the order, villagers claimed Monday. Discovery Power, a joint Chinese-Cambodian venture, was given a license to dredge sand for ...

The army created a new platoon on Monday to guard an area near the Areng Valley in Koh Kong province, where hundreds of ethnic minority residents have fiercely resisted plans by a Chinese company to build a hydropower dam that would flood their ancestral lands. The ...

A conservation group has said its recent trip to Laos revealed that construction on a controversial hydropower dam decried by neighbouring Mekong countries is already under way. International Rivers representatives visiting the proposed site of the 260-megawatt Don Sahong Hydropower Project earlier this month say they ...

About 400 monks and villagers protested Sunday outside Wat Koh Puthivong pagoda in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district to protest what they say is a real estate company’s encroachment onto the pagoda’s land, including an island that monks consider sacred. During the protest, dozens of young ...

Military police joined forces with the Fisheries Administration in Kompong Thom province on Friday to arrest six men and confiscate four bulldozers being used to clear protected flooded forest in Stong district’s fisheries conservation area, officials said Sunday. District military police commander Khun Bunho said that ...

A fishing community that abandoned a stretch of the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh’s Russey Keo district earlier this month after dead fish began appearing in the water have brought their floating houses back home, authorities and community representatives said yesterday. The 29 families who ...

A Battambang bridge project isn’t to blame for blocking a river and preventing water from reaching parched rice fields, an Asian Development Bank investigation concluded yesterday. Bavel district farmers accused the bank-funded construction project of choking the river since construction began in December, leaving their recently ...

As the sun rises on Tonle Sap Lake, fishermen head out from floating villages like this one, past half-submerged mangroves and flooded shrub land, to check their nets, much as they have for centuries. Every year, the lake yields about 300,000 tons of fish, making it ...

Fishermen who have lived off the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh’s Russey Keo district for generations were forced upstream recently after hundreds of dead fish mysteriously appeared in local waters. The 29 families who live on houseboats from which they cast their traps started moving ...

The Ministry of Water Resources seized four boats on Wednesday for allegedly breaking a government ban on river sand dredging in Phnom Penh and is searching for the owners. The city issued the ban last year in response to what it said was an oversupply of ...

Cambodia Ministry of Tourism hopes to encourage international tourists to visit coastal areas and ecotourism destinations to take pressure off Siem Reap. The ministry’s marketing & promotion department representative, Hou Sokhom, told TTR Weekly that the country needs to encourage tourists to travel more to other ...

After blocking a river for months, a construction project’s recently installed water pipes are delivering relief to only some of Battambang’s drought-stricken fields. More than 400 farmers in Bavel district blamed the Asian Development Bank-funded bridge for choking the river since construction began in December, leaving ...

A series of high-flying creatures, including giant flying frogs and squirrels and a parachute gecko, are among the hundreds of exotic new species recently discovered in the greater Mekong region in southeast Asia. A new eyeless spider and a fish that mates head-to-head are also highlighted ...

Laos will push ahead with its ambition to become the “battery of Southeast Asia,” planning a Mekong River dam that has drawn opposition from neighbors and threatens to involve China and the U.S. Four Mekong River nations are scheduled to meet June 26-27 in Thailand to ...