Qualla: Stung Sen Dam

Stung Sen Dam: Introduction

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Read the record for the Stung Sen Dam and the same phrase keeps coming back. How large would the reservoir be? Exact data is not available. How many people would it displace? Not available. What would losing this flow mean to the Tonle Sap and to the fisheries that feed a large share of Cambodia? No information. Three questions, and the file answers all three by shrugging. The dam has a height on paper — 38 metres — an installed capacity of 40 megawatts, a price tag north of 300 million US dollars, and a feasibility study run under memorandum by a Korean company. What it does not have is any published account of what it would cost the people and the water downstream.

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Stung Sen Dam: River of Soldiers

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Stung Sen rises in the hills of Preah Vihear province and runs 520 kilometres southwest across the central plain before emptying into the Tonle Sap system — the largest of the eleven main tributaries feeding the great lake, draining a basin of 16,344 square kilometres that co...

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Stung Sen Dam: Kompong Putrea

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

One name does appear in the file. The reservoir, whatever its final size, would put the settlement of Kompong Putrea under water. How many households that means, how many people, what they farm or fish, where they would go — none of it is in the public record. This is the ordinar...

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Stung Sen Dam: The Lake That Breathes

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

To understand why a mid-sized tributary dam is not a small question, look at what the Tonle Sap does every year. When the monsoon swells the Mekong, the Tonle Sap River is forced to run backwards and the lake inflates from something like 2,500 square kilometres and a metre of dep...

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Stung Sen Dam: Fourth in the Queue

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For all the attention it has attracted, the Stung Sen Dam has never been close to construction. The Cambodia National Mekong Committee ranks it a "second phase" priority — behind Prek Thnot, Stung Battambang and Stung Chinit, three projects that must come first. Decades after the...

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Stung Sen Dam: One River, Two Verdicts

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The neatest thing about the Stung Sen is that the country has already made up its mind about it — twice, in opposite directions. Downstream, where the river meets the lake, 6,355 hectares carrying the same name form one of the three core areas of the Tonle Sap Biosphere Reserve, ...

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