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# Public debate: who owns the riverfront?
- URL: https://riel-media.com/en/agenda/public-debate-who-owns-the-riverfront-en/
- Published: 2026-08-27T02:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-04T09:59:05.000Z
- Description: Residents, planners and the ministry, on one stage.
- Author: Melissa Chenda
- Tags: Agenda, #lang-en, #pair-agenda-debat, #demo-content, #when-2026-09-11, #at-1900

The barges arrive after dark. From the bank at Prek Ambel you hear them before you see them — a low diesel hum, then the slap of a suction pipe hitting water.

Cambodia banned commercial sand dredging on this stretch of the Mekong in September 2024, three months after the river took twelve houses in a single night. Two years on, RielMedia counted nine barges working the same reach across six nights in August, and tracked two of them to a licence issued in a neighbouring district.

Villagers say the erosion never stopped. Satellite imagery reviewed for this story shows the bank at Prek Ambel retreating a further eleven metres between March and July.

> “We were told the river would rest. The river has not rested.”Chan Sokhun, village chief, Prek Ambel