For most of her life, 59-year-old farmer Tip Kamlue has irrigated her fields in northern Thailand with the waters of the Kok River, which flows down from neighbouring Myanmar before joining with the Mekong River that cuts through Southeast Asia.
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But since April, after authorities warned residents to stop using the Kok’s water because of concerns over contamination, Tip has been using groundwater to grow pumpkins, garlic, sweetcorn and okra.
“It’s like half of me has died,” Tip said, standing by her fields in Tha Ton subdistrict, and looking out at the river that she is now forced to shun.
Across mainland Southeast Asia, more than 2,400 mines – many of them illegal and unregulated – could be releasing deadly chemicals such as cyanide and mercury into river water, according to research from the US-based Stimson Centre think tank released on Monday.
“The scale is something that’s striking to me,” said Brian Eyler, senior fellow at Stimson, pointing to scores of tributaries of major rivers, like the Mekong, the Salween and the Irrawaddy, that are probably highly contaminated.
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