It's been called Cambodia's own 'Three Gorges Dam' in the making. The Cambodian government says it is in the final stages of negotiations with Chinese state-owned company Sinohydro about the construction of a 145-metre-high dam on the Kamchay River, which will flood 2,600 hectares of the Bokor National Park in Kampot province.

The 280-million U.S. dollar hydroelectric project is thought to be China's biggest single investment in Cambodia, allowing Sinohydro to manage the power plant for 30 years after completion of the dam in 2010, said Bun Narith, deputy general director of the General Department of Energy at the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy (MIME).

The Kamchay River area, 15 km north of Kampot town, has been the subject of interest from hydro-prospectors since the early 1960s. The proposed Kamchay dam site is in Mak Prang commune, Kampot district - just three kms upstream from the scenic Tek Chhu waterfall, which attracts picnicking locals and tourists.

The capital required to build a megadam there is huge, but so are the potential returns.

A study carried out a decade ago by Canadian firms Pomerleau International, Hydro-Quebec and Experco, estimated that a hydro power plant at Kamchay could generate 469 gigawatt-hours per year and earn 55 million dollars in annual revenues from the sale of the electricity.

But early attempts to get the project underway halted in the mid-1990s, when the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) withdrew funding for a Hydro-Quebec and Pomerleau feasibility study. CIDA reportedly requested that the financing of the project be secured before they would release funds for the feasibility study - an unlikely investment without a feasibility study and an "elegant" way to freeze the project, according to a Pomerleau source quoted in the 'Post' at the time.

A decade later, however, the government's top hydroelectric official at MIME is confident the project will go ahead with Chinese backing.

"We are nearly finished the negotiation and now we hope - 90 percent - that they will build the Kamchay dam," Narith said. "They will open the construction site in December or January."

Despite the mega-project being scheduled to start within months, MIME is refusing to release details of the feasibility study for Kamchay, which should include environmental and social impact assessments.

Narith says the feasibility study was completed by a Japanese organisation in 2002.

"We had a workshop in early 2002 to explain to the people about the feasibility study, because if we give the whole copy of the report to the people they will not understand because it is written in English."

Narith refused to release the study to the 'Post', saying it is a "secret" document.

Chey Utheareth, director of Bokor National Park, said he had heard talk of a Chinese company winning a bid to work on the dam, but did not know when it would start.

Utheareth confirmed that the proposed reservoir is within the national park, home to several species of internationally endangered animals, including tigers.

"I don't know what the impact will be because I've never seen the [feasibility] report," he said. "At that time [approximately three or four years ago] one company from Canada came to study the feasibility [of the dam] but they only informed me they would come and didn't invite me to participate."

"They only had police, soldiers and officials from the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy participating in the study," said Utheareth, adding that he would follow the government's policy on the construction of Kamchay dam.

LOCAL IMPACT

Although it is understood that the dam will not displace any residents, it will affect the livelihoods of those who harvest bamboo and rattan from the forest.

Chun Choun, 37, has spent the last 20 years making daily excursions from his village in O'Touch to the forest to cut bamboo. He said the planned hydroproject made him nervous because his village was downstream from the proposed dam site.

"I am afraid our country will become like other countries on the TV news, which reports about breaking dams and flooding that causes a lot of people living downstream to lose their houses and die," Choun said.

He said neither the research companies nor the government had ever asked locals whether they supported the dam.

The lack of local consultation could be forgotten, however, in the face of massive employment opportunities and the positive economic benefits of having a huge construction project in the area.

"The building project has a five-year duration, so it will need thousands of workers, because it is the biggest project [in Cambodia]," Narith said. "On behalf of the government, we will tell the Chinese company to offer the workers an appropriate wage."

The prospect of steady work is welcome news for some labou8rers.

Ke Pheap, 35, from Thvey Khang Chheoung village, is another long-time bamboo harvester who earns 20,000 to 25,000 riel a day selling his wares.

"If they build the dam in the bamboo-cutting area, they have to offer us daily work otherwise the dam would not remain standing - it would be destroyed [for scrap materials and to recover bamboo fields] by hungry people who have nothing to eat," he said.

"If they hire us, they have to pay us more than 10,000 riel a day," Pheap said. "I do not work as a construction worker because I would be paid only 7,000 riel a day and would not be able to support my family."

For other locals, the dam could bring prosperity - or the destruction of their way of life.

Café owner Mao Chon applauds the proposed dam project. While he is concerned about losing his regular customers - currently about 60 people stop in for coffee at his shop on the way to the bamboo fields - the influx of thousands of workers to the area would likely be a boom for business. But Chon is also concerned that the dam might break and destroy his house, which is downstream from the dam site and just 50 meters from the Kamchay river.

"Even in a casual flood, the water rises up to my house," Chon said.

Like several other residents interviewed in the area near Kamchay River, Chon said the risk of floods would be offset by cheap electricity, adding that the current price was 1,200 riel per kWh.

Chon and his neighbors may be disappointed. Narith said there were no plans to give discounted electricity to those living near the hydro plant, and that it is difficult to connect houses located far from each other.

To date, Cambodia's experience with hydroelectricity has been mixed. Kirirom I is a 12-megawatt power plant in Koh Kong province that supplies electricity to Kampong Speu and, in the rainy season, 7 percent of Phnom Penh's power. However, when the river dries up, so does the power supply to the capital. Kirirom I was built by Chinese company CETIC and is managed by Electricity du Cambodge.

In Rattanakiri, the $1.2 billion Yali Falls dam across the border in Vietnam has wreaked havoc on Cambodian villagers downstream on Se San river. At least 39 people have drowned and thousands of livestock have been washed away by rapidly fluctuating river levels caused by the dam, according to Canadian NGO Probe International.

Despite the troubles in Rattanakiri, the government is keen to pursue hydro projects. There are at least three more dams proposed for Koh Kong and one for Pursat.

RISKS AHEAD?

But local NGO Culture and Environment Preservation Association (CEPA) is concerned that the government may be leaping into development projects of impressive scale without fully considering the potential for environmental and social damage.

Tep Bunnarith, executive director of CEPA, said locals often think dams will bring free or cheap electricity to their community. "But they never think of the disadvantages of building dams," said Bunnarith, who also criticised the lack of transparency in the planning process.

"The government has never opened up to the public, NGOs or even other governmental organisations themselves to participate in environmental impact assessments [EIAs] for each project."

He believes that the 2,600-hectare reservoir may affect wild animals in Bokor National Park, cause a loss of livelihoods for bamboo-cutters and increase the risk of malaria and dengue fever.

But telling Kamchay River residents of those concerns has attracted the ire of the local authorities, he said.

"We do our survey to educate as well as to let people know what's going on in their areas, but the government accuses our survey of not being scientific," Bunnarith said.

Touch Seang Tana, a member of the Economic, Social, Culture Observation Unit (OBSES) and secretary of state at the Council of Ministers, thinks a dam at Kamchay will have little impact on the environment because, he says, about 80 percent of the vegetation has already been destroyed by local residents.

"Only science and technology can provide factual information about environmental impact to the government," Tana said. "We cannot just speak our thoughts in order to prevent the development."

He said, however, that the EIAs made by officials are often inaccurate and suggested that university students be engaged to conduct independent environmental assessments.

"If [we] let officials coming from ministries [do the EIA], they will not decide to offer any area [a development project] unless they get their own profit," Tana said. "Only students could accurately research [EIAs]."

Tana said his own research indicates that Chinese dams on the upper stretches of the Mekong River have caused fish catches in Cambodia to fall by up to 20 percent in some years, and said the large investment in Kamchay might be a way for China to curry favor with the Cambodian government.

The Chinese embassy in Phnom Penh declined to comment on its dam building programme in Cambodia and around the region.

Other dam experts, however, dispute Tana's theory and say China is backing the dam because they have the experience to pull off huge construction projects. Between 1949 and 1990, China built 86,000 hydro dams, including 22,000 "great dams," according to 2002 research into the Manwan Power Plant conducted for Oxfam Hong Kong.

Those who have followed China's dam industry offer words of caution to Cambodia.

"My advice to every government: before they build the dam, they have to do EIA and SIA [social impact assessments] as much as possible, and they have to listen to NGOs," said Zhuang Li, administrative officer for Green Watershed's Kunming office.

"Then the government has to compare the advantages and the disadvantages [of a large dam] and see which one has more benefit," Li said.

*This story was done by Sam Rith of the 'Phnom Penh Post' for the Imaging Our Mekong media fellowship programme (www.newsmekong.org), implemented by IPS Asia-Pacific.