In 2007, the Russian company Bureyagesstroy got a license to conduct a feasibility study on a dam. The feasibility study was carried out and the company asked permission to build the hydroelectric power station. However, on December 9, 2009, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the Cambodian Government and the Vietnam Industrial and Urban Area Investment Development Corp to conduct a new feasibility study on the dam. The results of this survey have not been released. In March 2020, due to ecological concerns, the Cambodian government halted all hydroelectric developments on the Mekong River until 2030, pushing back the Stung Treng dam project along with its neighbor the Sambor dam project.
Description
The Stung Treng Dam would be an earth core rockfill gravity dam. If completed, the dam's crest would be long and high. Its rated head would be. It would have an installed capacity of 980 MW, and would, on average, generate 4,870 GWh per year. The dam's reservoir, which would extend well beyond the mainstream canal, would have an active storage of, and would inundate an area of. The reservoir would be long.
Impact
Multiple independent agencies, including International Rivers, the Save the Mekong campaign and other have all raised concerns about the dam's construction. In addition, Cambodia is a member of the Mekong River Commission, which requires prior notification of hydropower construction on the river's mainstream – i.e. plans for the Stung Treng will be subject to scrutiny by Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. A report authorized by the Mekong River Commission and released in January 2010 recommended that the Stung Treng along with the Sambor Dam be delayed for 10 years. The dam site lies within the Stung Treng Ramsar Site, which effectively obliges the Royal Cambodian Government to ‘actively support' the three 'pillars' of the Ramsar Convention:
including as far as possible the wise use of all wetlands in national environmental planning,
consulting with other Parties about implementation of the Convention, especially in regard to transboundary wetlands, shared water systems, and shared species.
It is expected that fish migration routes will be essentially wholly impeded. The two proposed dams of the Sambor and the Stung Treng would have the Mekong river basin's highest sediment trapping efficiencies of all the Lower Mekong Basin's proposed mainstream projects, destabilising downstream channels between Kratié and Phnom Penh and reducing overbank siltation in the Cambodian floodplain. If built, an estimated 21 villages with 2,059 households and 10,617 people will be displaced with the construction of the dam.
Additional resources
Halls, A.S. and Kshatriya, M. 2009. Modeling the Cumulative barrier and passage effects of mainstream hydropower dams on migratory fish populations in the Lower Mekong Basin.
MRC Technical Paper No. 25. Vientiane, Mekong River Commission.
King, P., Bird, J. and Haas, L. 2007. The current status of environmental criteria for hydropower development in the Mekong Region: a literature compilation. Vientiane, Lao PDR, WWF-Living Mekong Program.
