In Vietnam, the mighty Mekong’s banks are crumbling as illegal sand miners run riot – South China Morning Post

Unauthorized sand mining at the Tatai River in the Koh Kong Conservation Corridor, Cambodia 2012 (by Wikirictor, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia).

When the retaining wall of Vietnamese fish farmer Ho Thi Bich Tuyen’s catfish pond collapsed into the Hau River several years ago, she knew who was to blame: illegal sand miners.
“They took the sand, and the riverbed just kept going lower and lower,” she said. “There were so many of them. The sand miners came close to the riverbank. So I told the local ward officials to shoo them away, but at night they came back again…”