Since early March, the water of the Bassac River in Kandal’s Sa’ang district has been turning black for days at a time, residents say, decimating local fish farms and leading to an inspection of three nearby factories on Wednesday by local authorities.
“The water would turn black and the fish would die,” said Tiet Saly, 38, a fish farmer in the predominantly Cham village of Boren Krom in Svay Brateal commune.
Saly began the season with 2,500 fish in his cages. At first, just a few died or grew ill, when they stopped eating and growing. But as more died – at one point 50 or 60 at once – he decided to cut his losses months before the usual selling period in July.
“I sold off the rest of my fish, but some families lost hundreds of fish,” he said.
Pheam Yousef, 38, was one of the less fortunate of the 20 or so fish farming families in the village.
Of his stock of 4,000 local catfish and Spanish tilapia, he lost about half, with deaths spiking last week, at which point villagers voiced their grievances with local authorities.
District Governor Nhem Vandin said that fisheries officials and commune authorities carried out inspections on Wednesday morning, but he has yet to receive a report on their findings.
Kan Penh, the district Fisheries Administration chief, said all five points where wastewater was flowing into the river were inspected. It was found that local communal drainage pipes were being used by three factories as well as local villagers, with untreated wastewater going into the river.
