To this story add hundreds more stories of the deaths of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, respected elders. These are the stories heard in the fishing villages located along the Se San River in Cambodia's northeastern province. This is the story of lives shattered by a hydroelectric dam known as Yali Falls. Yali Falls hydroelectric project on the Se San River, with funding from the governments of Russia and Ukraine. The first of the floods occurred in 1996, when a section of the dam broke and reservoir water escaped through the breach in the dam's structure.
Subsequent floods appear to have been the result of dam operators' unannounced reservoir releases.
But the dam that causes the flooding - it harms our bodies but we cannot hide. Before these unnatural floods began, the Se San River was a rich resource for communities living along the river and a critical habitat for fishes in the Mekong River system. In Ratanakiri province, the region affected by the dam, approximately 20,000 people live along the Se San. Almost all of these are indigenous and ethnic minority people, who relied on the river's natural seasonal flows to grow food in riverside gardens, and as a source of fish and habitat for the many wild animals and plants used for food and medicine by these communities. Fear of flash-floods has forced most people to avoid, when possible, activities on or along the Se San River, including fishing and using the river for boat travel.