A woman walks with her child at the fishermen's village of Kbal Chroy on the Mekong River bank near Phnom Penh on Thursday. It said the dam designed by China Southern Power Grid Co would have a 620-square-kilometre reservoir and dwarf the biggest dam currently being built on the Mekong, the Xayaburi dam in Laos, which was bitterly opposed by environmentalists for years. Alternative sites upstream where the Mekong separates into several channels are possible but either financially unfeasible or only marginally less destructive than the site currently envisaged for the 2,600-megawatt dam, the study said. "The dam and the reservoir would create a barrier that would be devastating for the migratory fish stocks,'' the study said. Laos, one of the poorest countries in Asia, is pinning development hopes on becoming a source of power for its neighbours.

Source: Bangkok Post May 18, 2018 03:33 UTC