Three Rivers Dams (6)
We could have gone straight along the Sesan for 15 minutes and then cross the river with a small boat to reach Tan Kathe. Instead our translator took us left, over the bridge in Andong Meas on a 1 hour trip by car on tracks just very recently scraped through the hills and on another 50 minutes walk through the forest to reach this Jarai settlement. It was flooded three times in the recent past by the waters released from the Yali dam in Vietnam, causing severe damage and killing livestock. Unlike seasonal flooding, these water surges occur in 12 hours, leaving the people little or no time to save their belongings. They are also three to four meters higher than the floods during rainy season. The community is now dwindling. People are afraid and move to higher ground. To make things worse, the Sesan5 dam will be built nearby soon, and the communal land that the people from Tan Kathe are using for farming is now targeted by agro-industrial companies.
See also here, here, here, here, and here…
