Will backers of more than 200 proposed hydro projects in Southeast Asia learn any lessons from the flawed Pak Mun Dam in Thailand?

A full moon sinks, and night still obscures the flanking jungled cliffs. But already boats glide like phantoms over the hushed water. Only a seven-story wall of concrete, looming in the darkness, drives a slide-rule-perfect wedge through the tropical tangle.

Just below this alien hulk, Sut Aphairat, a lifelong fisherman, and his younger companion Khamlay Chuayrat deftly pull a bamboo trap from the sluggish water. It has been submerged a full day, but they can barely scrape out two pounds of fish, most no longer than an index finger. Baiting the snare afresh with rice, they chug away in their little launch from what was once among the richest fishing grounds in Thailand. Today, they hope to pocket 80 cents for their efforts.

As the two fishermen head for the village market at dawn, people on shore begin to rustle, and nine-year-old Omchit Soi-suan prepares for another day at school. She's not going to her fondly remembered riverside playground--that's now underwater--but to a new concrete-block facility where eight out of ten children who attend live without their fathers and sometimes mothers, too. "Papa and mama must go to Bangkok to find work," the child explains.

Virtually everyone in this community in northeastern Thailand, including the two fishermen and Omchit's foster parents, name a single villain for rupturing and impoverishing their lives. It is the Pak Mun Dam, one of the first in a series of projects to tame the world's last great free-flowing waterway--Asia's Mekong River. Pak Mun, finished in 1994, is on the Mekong's largest tributary.

In all, more than 200 similar dam sites have been identified for the river basin. High costs, Asia's current economic downturn, lower demand for electricity and growing concerns about environmental and social impacts have dampened enthusiasm for some. Still, about 60 may proceed, according to International Rivers Network, a U.S.-based organization that keeps tabs on river projects around the world, and critics worry they will change the lives, culture and environment of millions--just as Pak Mun has already done.

The Mekong begins in the mountains of eastern Tibet and, fed by a network of smaller rivers, courses majestically through China, Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam before emptying into the South China Sea. Proposed human-made projects along the way will include low "run-of-the-river" dams--which theoretically allow all that flows toward them, including nutrients and sediments, to travel downstream--and larger dams that would produce hydroelectric power or irrigation but block natural water flow. So far, two dams have been completed, five are under construction and about seven are in an advanced stage of planning. In Laos alone, the government has signed 23 memoranda of understanding with private companies to build dams.

Problems of the Pak Mun, which is officially designated as a run-of-the-river dam, may pale before those of other larger projects. Much is at stake, for example, at an idyllic spot 250 miles downstream in Cambodia. This is the site of one of nine dams--the Sambor--recommended for the Mekong's main stream in 1994 by the Mekong River Commission, an international body which oversees development on the river network. The Sambor is now on hold as its backers assess costs and perceived benefits in water control, electricity generation and other development, but the project illustrates what might be at stake when any large new dam is built.

One who would be affected if Sambor were built is villager Ong Suan. Now 66, he survived American bombing raids and the Khmer Rouge killing fields during the 1970s. His village of Kampi is blotted out on blueprints of international agencies he's never heard of. Kampi would disappear before a $4 billion hydroelectric project backers say would generate revenue for a nation that ranks among the poorest on Earth and one still reeling from decades of war and terror.

For now, the river is an ongoing source of pleasure for Ong Suan. With his family, he rests on a high, tree-shaded riverbank watching the late afternoon sun crack the glassy water into a myriad of shimmering shards as white egrets from nearby wetlands sail across the backdrop of monsoon clouds. Suddenly out of deep pools among forested islands that seem to float on the free-flowing surge, pairs of freshwater dolphins break the surface in playful arches.

"The Lord Buddha has always helped us," says Ong Suan, who is nicknamed Grandfather Dolphin. The Mekong has helped, too. It irrigates his fields, puts fish in the pot, washes his body, carries his boat to otherwise inaccessible places and deposits fertile silt for a riverside vegetable garden.

Construction of the new dam could change all of that. It would flood 310 square miles, displace 60,000 people and endanger wildlife that still includes tigers, wild buffalo, bears, elephants and crocodiles. It would also have a profound impact on the 1,000 aquatic species found in the Mekong--from the largest-known freshwater stingray to migratory catfish that are important commercially. After the Amazon, the Mekong may rank as the most bio-diverse river in the world.

"Here we have our houses, our land, our river," says commune chief Len Chou, as he and a dozen villagers gather in Kampi. They have been told almost nothing about the project, but they've heard that if the dam goes up, they would be forced to move 30 miles to a rocky, highly malarial region. Their generations-long umbilical cord to the Mekong would be severed forever. "There's no water, no fish up there," says the leader, wearing a "Save the Mekong River Dolphin" T-shirt. "Maybe if we make our voices loud enough, God will hear us and help. Otherwise we would die."

As feasibility studies proceed, conservationists hold out hope that the world's twelfth longest river can still be saved. For most of its 2,600 miles, the Mekong has remained surprisingly pristine, protected from development by the remoteness of its upper reaches, where rapids obstruct navigation, and more recently by wars in Indochina. Its source in the snowy heights of Tibet was discovered just four years ago. The first bridge across it was not completed until 1994. And just one mainstream dam, China's Manwan, has been built to date.

But with the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and subsequent easing of regional tensions, interest escalated in what planners call "the great untapped resource of Southeast Asia." Landlocked and endowed with few resources but hydroelectric potential, Laos dreams of becoming the "Kuwait of Asia." Hungry for energy and irrigation, rapidly industrializing Thailand went on a dam-building spree, including construction of the World Bank-funded Pak Mun Dam.

During its construction, Pak Mun's backers proclaimed that it would be built right. In published statements, the bank assured that "every major component of the project, from the possible effect on fisheries to the living standard of affected villagers, is being closely watched to ensure that the long-term outcomes accord with expectations."

In reality, people in the 53 affected villages were never consulted, and residents who dared protest were beaten, arrested and even shot while demonstrating against the dam. Four years later, the incomes of more than 5,000 fishing families have plunged, sometimes by as much as 90 percent. And the dam? It generates only enough electricity to light up one and a half shopping complexes.

"Dams kill rivers," explains Tyson Roberts of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute who predicted with precision how Pak Mun would wreak devastation on migrating fish. To appease critics, the project's builders constructed a crude, steep fish ladder. But knowing locals could only joke: "Thai fish are not trained circus animals. They don't jump."

The two key agencies involved--the World Bank and the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand--have both gone on record as saying mistakes were made. In a recent report, the bank acknowledges that compensation for lost fishing income was inadequate and resettlement planning was poorly handled. But such admissions are too late for people like little Omchit Soisuan. Her parents now work on construction sites in Bangkok, where they earn less than $4 a day.

"The dam has brought us no benefit," sighs Maa Thammaa, Omchit's 61-year-old foster mother. With Omchit nestled under her arm, the betel-nut-chewing woman recalls when a good daily catch weighed in at 200 pounds. "That was the time when people all over Thailand used to say 'If you want to eat good fish, come to Pak Mun.'"

"Before, we focused on our fishing, our fields, our neighbors, our community," said Boonta Chum Tong, a teacher at Omchit's school. "Now we must spend too much time trying to make a living, trying to get money from the outside. We are not so close together any more."

For ichthyologist Roberts, a tropical fish expert who keeps discovering hitherto unknown species in the Mekong, Pak Mun foretells the unwanted impacts to be expected from proposed dams on the river's mainstream. "The lessons are clear," he says, "but is anybody listening?"

In Cambodia, some like Touch Sieng Thana--that country's leading fisheries expert--listen very closely. He believes dams like Sambor would subvert a vital, fragile ecosystem with the Mekong as its bloodline and the Great Lake--as a vast Cambodian wetland is known--as its very heart.

Fed by melting snows and monsoon rains, the river swells towards year's end, triggering a complex hydrological event: The Mekong's waters reverse their flow, rolling up a tributary and into the Great Lake, which every wet season expands to six times its size. Not only do Cambodians derive more than 60 percent of their protein from this expanse, but the surrounding wetlands encompass perhaps Southeast Asia's grandest aviary. Here are found the region's only colony of spot-billed pelicans and its largest-known flocks of the oriental darter, painted stork and black-headed ibis. Such riches, warns Touch Sieng Thana, will vanish if man tampers with the great annual flooding.

Khy Tainglim, vice chairman of Cambodia's National Mekong Committee, disagrees. He envisions storing the river's surplus for dry-season irrigation and harnessing its rush to earn income from wealthier neighbors. "Hydropower is our national resource. It's like oil or gold. We have water available so we have to use it," he argues.

"How else can we solve the energy problem? Solar? Wind? When?" he continues. "In the meantime, people will cut down trees for fuel, for energy. People have to cook their rice. We are poor so we cannot import energy," says Tainglim, an experienced engineer. "There are no miracle solutions."

Already around Sambor--which means "bounty"--too many trees are being felled. Pesticides for control of insects in fields and orchards pollute the river. Fish are hunted not by sustainable means but with grenades and electric shock. Even without a dam, Ong Suan and his fellow villagers complain about the drop in size, number and species of fish over the past decade.

As harvests diminish, the stronger village men now travel further upriver where there's still talk of fish so big they can hardly be lifted. In a riverine forest of islands and rapids, gnarled roots and tree trunks bend to the currents. Disturbed by the purr of the motor, a flock of parrots skitters across the bow as monkeys chatter from treetops and lizards bask on the riverbank.

This primeval world seems not to impress dam planners, however. The latest, 600-page study on Mekong mainstream dams devotes just 56 words to this wildlife Eden which would be flooded, pried open to exploiters and inaccessible to migratory aquatic species, including the dolphins, if Sambor is built.

"We're powerless" is the persistent chorus at Sambor, voiced with the stoicism of people--not unlike those in rural Thailand--who have endured untold suffering through centuries. Ong Suan and his neighbors wonder how they can block "the big people" and foreigners from building a dam when they lack the clout even to stop illegal dynamite fishing, which they say is done by their country's own soldiers.

Thus, the future of Ong Suan's nine children--the fourth generation to reside along the Mekong at Kampi--remains precarious. Passing their lives in breeze-swept, stilt-raised dwellings near where they fished and farmed according to the seasons, Ong Suan's generation was uprooted by the Communist Khmer Rouge, which exterminated 2,000 families from the region and drove Ong Suan into a slave-labor camp.

When the Khmer Rouge reign of terror ended in 1979, Ong Suan's family and surviving friends--skeletal, diseased, brutalized--straggled home empty handed. He scoured the jungle for edible food, rented a cow to begin rice planting, but best of all, began again to fish, bartering part of his catch for clothes, rice and other necessities.

"In a sense we died under the Khmer Rouge, but then we were reborn," says Grandfather Dolphin. "The Mekong saved our lives."

Antonin Mecir writes frequently on environmental issues in Southeast Asia. Photographer Robert McLeod is based in Bangkok. They traveled hundreds of miles on the Mekong and its tributaries for this story.

Despite promised riches, the Pak Mun Dam has brought misery and ecological trauma. Just ask fisherman Sut Aphairat and nine-year-old Omchit Soisuan.

The Mekong "saved the life" of Cambodian villager Ong Suan. Can it continue to help him if the proposed Sambor Dam is built?

Weighing the Options: When To Build Dams

As new dams are planned worldwide, funders and others involved are increasingly asking whether such projects make sense. When does a big dam's benefits--including flood control, electric-power generation, irrigation and water supply for towns--outweigh adverse social, environmental and economic impacts? Last year a new international body was established to answer that question.

The World Commission on Dams will issue guidelines, standards and criteria by June 2000.

COPYRIGHT 1999 National Wildlife Federation
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group