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# Sand dredging on the Mekong resumes despite a two-year ban
- URL: https://riel-media.com/en/news/sand-dredging-on-the-mekong-resumes-despite-a-two-year-ban-en/
- Published: 2026-08-27T02:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-08T11:56:59.000Z
- Description: Barges are working again off Kandal province, seven kilometres from a village that lost twelve houses to the river in 2024. Provincial officials say the permits are “under review”.
- Author: Melissa Chenda
- Tags: News, #lang-en, #pair-mekong-sand-dredging, #demo-content, Environment

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