September in April

It’s been September in April in Kampot. In the week or so centering around Khmer New Year we had close to 12 inches – 30cm – of rain with two very heavy deluges and the rest of the time it was dark and cloudy with lighter rainfalls almost every day. That is exactly what you’d expect in September, our heaviest month which in fact receives an average of 12 inches of precipitation.

This is my eleventh April in Cambodia and I’ve never seen anything like it. At least 3 or 4 of those years saw no precipitation whatever, not a drop. They were characterized by a relentless overbearing heat. In the five years I’ve lived in Kampot my cistern, which collects rainwater from the roof, has gone completely dry twice. This year it never got down to half. Climate Change anyone?

Just before the first torrent we had temperatures in the high 90s – 36-37C – which is very rare for Kampot since we are close to the sea and its moderating effects. Since warmer air holds more moisture, it follows that rainfall will increase with rising temperatures. At some point the use of the term global warming morphed into climate change, and it’s a bit more accurate since, for instance, climate change actually is bringing unusually cold wintry weather to places like the UK. Still, there have now been 336 consecutive months in which global temperature has exceeded the twentieth century average.

Almost all climate change predictions have underestimated the pace of change. That is partly because of the impacts of feedback loops. For instance, when ice, which reflects sunlight melts, leaving much darker blue sea or rock, more heat is absorbed. Each measure of melting then accelerates the loss of additional ice. While there’s no way to definitively attribute individual climate events to man’s impact on the climate, erratic or unusual weather is exactly what the models predict.

Nonetheless, Cambodia is doing its part to make things worse. But first, around the beginning of April there were news reports of  serious power outages in the capital. Why is that, the national electric company was asked, when the Kamchey dam near Kampot is now finished and working? When there’s water behind the dam it can provide almost half of Phnom Penh’s total demand, which is 400 megawatts (but growing at 20 to 25% per year). Unfortunately, in April, the time its power is needed most, there’s (usually) no water so the dam was working at only 10% of capacity. A few days later, representatives of the dam said they’d found a way to conserve water, so could send more juice the capital’s way. Mysteriously, right after that our water pressure went limp. No water at all for a couple hours a day. So water pressure is back with the heavy rain and I expect there’s a lot more water to pass through the generators at the dam.

If it hadn’t started raining, Cambodia’s first coal-fired plant which is due online in June or July, would’ve taken up the slack. At 700 megawatts, it can supply nearly twice the capital’s demand. The nice thing about coal is that it’s relatively cheap, but that’s its only saving grace. Under the best conditions it’ll produce large amounts of CO2. Being built by the Chinese it’ll also almost certainly spew lots of other more immediately toxic gases and particulates into the air. Modern coal plants can be relatively clean on matters other than CO2, but it’s hard to imagine the Chinese builders giving a damn about Cambodia’s air quality, considering China’s own air is among the worst in the world. Air pollution controls make a plant cost a lot more, so it’s extremely unlikely to happen, especially with Cambodia in such a subservient position.

Most new power projects in Cambo, both hydro and coal, are structured as BOT or build, operate, transfer. The developer finances and builds the plant, operates it for 30 or 40 years and then turns it over to the government. Cambodia, in its haste for power and development at any cost, has accepted whatever terms the Chinese – they’re almost all Chinese – have offered. This usually includes penalties for not using power. In other words, if there’s a surplus of power, the government pays anyway. And that’s understandable, nobody’s going to put up hundreds of millions of dollars without some guarantee of payback. Still that could potentially be a very big problem in the future.

Is this exceptionally wet April a harbinger of extreme rainfall later in the season? Impossible to say, but it’s remarkable nonetheless. It could turn hot and dry next week, normal for this time of year, but if it is a portent of things to come we could be in for some serious flooding. As mentioned previously, right at a natural bottleneck in the river, across from the government buildings at the southern end of town, there’s been extensive landfilling, making the river even smaller there.

Being an estuary, thus essentially part of the sea, the water level reflects the tides more than anything else. The exception being in case of very heavy rainfall bringing water down from the mountains combined with a storm surge and high tide that brings large amounts of water in from the sea. In that case, that bottleneck will serve to flood large areas of the city. I’m not looking forward to it.

In other Kampot news the riverside walk is being extended south to the old port, Cambodia’s first port. There are sometimes large fishing boats docked there but mostly it’s for small boats. A wood boardwalk about 1.2 meters wide is being built there, I assume to provide a place for the small fishing boats to dock in the early morning when they return from the sea. There isn’t a lot of development there at present but a lot of property has changed hands and a one hectare lot just south of the government buildings has been cleared – they cut down lots of healthy trees but did leave one sugar palm – so I expect a substantial development is in progress.

At the other end of town river road is in the process of being widened and paved, I believe all the way to the road the leads to dam, about 11 kilometers. That work has involved felling lots of nice old trees which beautifully graced the road, sometimes making a leafy green canopy. That was my favorite bike ride, but no more, it’ll just be a wide busy highway you use to get somewhere, not someplace to take your time and enjoy on a bicycle.

I know progress is inevitable and important and that road had to be done eventually since it was a disaster for anything larger than a motorbike, but I’m still personally disappointed at the loss of  green and tranquility. The one aspect I do have to take exception to is that they’re widening it more than needs to be. That extra capacity won’t be needed at least for the next decade or so, so the trees could’ve remained a little longer, but Cambodian officials love their pavement so they had to go.