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The Dammed
HANDBOOK
Five Controversial Dams
For many developing countries hungry for energy sources, hydropower is an attractive option. But dams also can place heavy burdens on surrounding populations and eco-systems. While China touts its Three Gorges dam -- the world's largest -- as environmentally friendly, the United States has begun tearing down a number of its own structures for safety, economic, and environmental reasons. To broaden your knowledge of dams around the world, explore below the economic, environmental, social, and political aspects of five big dam projects in Turkey, Brazil, Laos, Lesotho, and China.
China: Three Gorges Dam
Upon its expected completion in 2009, this structure will be the world's largest hydroelectric dam. It will generate 18.2 million kilowatts of electricity, equivalent to the power of 18 nuclear power plants or 40 million tons of coal. The idea for a dam that would harness the power and control the flooding of the world's third longest river, the Yangtze, was first proposed in 1919 by Sun Yat-sen, father of the Chinese Republic. Plans for such a dam resurfaced several times until 1978, when economic reforms and a burgeoning industrial base necessitated more energy production, and in 1979 the State Council approved the project. Construction began in 1994. Yet since 1998, the closing of many state-operated enterprises has actually left China with a surplus of energy. Dam critics say the surplus highlights the overblown nature of a project that could have been built smaller, with less impact on the region's people and environment. The government feels the scale of the dam is necessary to tap into the nation's vast potential for energy consumption.
The Economics:
Officially, the dam is on track to stay within the limits of its $24 billion budget, although unofficial estimates of the cost run as high as $75 billion. The economic goal of the dam is to generate an enormous source of cheap electricity and make the region accessible to 10,000-ton ocean-going vessels laden with goods for trade, rendering China's interior provinces more appealing to foreign investors. The dam, which will have more than 770 billion cubic feet of flood-control storage in its reservoir, is also meant to prevent costly flood damage. In 1998, for instance, flooding in eastern China killed more than 2,000 people and left another 14 million homeless at a cost of $5.4 billion. Another major plus: the dam's supply of hydroelectric energy could encourage China to lessen its dependence on polluting coal-burning power. Yet the gorges themselves -- three steep canyons at the base of the Wu Shan Mountains -- are among China's most spectacular scenery; filling them up with water, many argue, will undermine the region's thriving tourist industry.
Human Displacement:
To make way for the 350-mile-long reservoir, more than half a million people have already been relocated. Most of them are farmers, and there have been complaints about the poor quality of the land they have received as compensation. Human-rights advocates have also reported that the Chinese government has not offered displaced residents adequate living accommodations, new job opportunities, or additional job training. By 2009, as many as 1.2 million people are expected to lose their homes to the dam's reservoir.
Environmental Concerns:
Perhaps the biggest concern about the dam's environmental impact surrounds industrial sites and waste facilities that will not be secured or decontaminated before being submerged by the reservoir. A lack of treatment plants in the area that will surround the new shoreline could cause waste runoff to seep into the reservoir and river, environmentalists say. Critics also argue that the dam may upset the delicate balance of the river's current eco-system, threatening a number of endangered species, as well as flood valuable agricultural land with its reservoirs. Still, these worries show no sign of delaying construction. According to a statement released by China's U.S. Embassy, more than a dozen waste water treatment plants are planned for the cities of Chongqing, Fuling, and Wanxian, all located in the reservoir area.
Cultural Heritage Impact
The area that will be submerged after the dam's completion includes ancient temples and burial grounds. A total of 1,300 archeological sites, many of which have never been explored, will be lost in the reservoir. Dam defenders argue that historically significant material will be moved to higher ground before the gorges are flooded, and efforts are underway to rescue ancient structures from the area.
Turkey: Ilisu Hydroelectric Project
The Ilisu Hydroelectric Project would create the largest dam in Turkey and a reservoir 125 square miles in size. Located in the southeastern corner of the Anatolian peninsula on the Tigris River, the project has been handicapped by uncertain financial support and mired in international criticism about its impact on the region's environment, culture, and Kurdish population.
The Economics
Final designs for the $1.5 billion Ilisu Hydroelectric Project were completed in 1982, but in the last several years the dam has had trouble securing financial backing, throwing its future in jeopardy. The Swedish construction firm Skanska backed out of the project in 2000, and in November 2001, the British engineering firm Balfour Beatty and its Italian civil engineering partner, Impregilo, withdrew from the project claiming there were irresolvable differences over commercial, environmental, and social aspects of the project. Currently, construction plans for the dam remain on hold.
Human Displacement
A 1999 report commissioned by the British government projects the Ilisu dam would affect 36,000 people, but some estimates suggest as many as 80,000 people would be impacted. Moreover, most of the inhabitants of the area are Kurdish, and dam opponents have gone so far as to imply that Ilisu is a plan by the Turkish government to ethnically cleanse the area of Kurds. Earlier dam projects in the region have a poor track record of satisfactorily resettling the displaced, critics say. In April 2000, Balfour Beatty stated that the Turkish government was implementing a program to provide the affected citizens with a number of compensation and relocation options; critics say that the government has not yet been in touch with anyone in the area about compensation or relocation. The Turkish government claims the dam is necessary to promote economic power, jobs, and economic progress in the area.
Environmental Concerns
Major Turkish cities on the Tigris such as Diyarbakir, Batman, and Siirt regularly dump solid waste and wastewater into the Tigris River. Once the dam is in place, the river will be even less effective in washing away these pollutants. Dam proponents claim new sewage plants will be built upstream to offset such pollution. Environmentalists suggest that the restricted flow of the river will result in erosion downstream; furthermore, they say, the dam will prevent the seasonal flooding downstream upon which local ecosystems depend. There are also concerns that the reservoir will create optimal conditions for the breeding of insects that spread diseases like malaria and Leishmaniasis, a condition that results in scabs and fever and is transmitted by sand flies.
Cultural Heritage Impact
The flooding that would follow construction of the Ilisu dam would destroy some of Turkey's most ancient archeological sites, including the 2,000-year-old city of Hasankeyf. Dam supporters point out that Hasankeyf consists of upper and lower towns, and that only the lower settlement will be completely submerged by the flooding. They also insist that material of historical value will be salvaged from the lower town before it is flooded -- and a number of archeologists are indeed working to recover artifacts from the area.
Political Implications
There are concerns that the Ilisu dam would restrict the flow of the Tigris into Syria and Iraq, a tense issue in a region short on water, and part of the greater debate on international waterway rights. Balfour Beatty, a former project participant, has argued that the dam will actually double the amount of water available to countries downstream by equalizing the river's water flow.
Lesotho and South Africa: Lesotho Highlands Water Project
In 1986, the Lesotho Highlands Water Project Treaty was signed between the governments of Lesotho and South Africa, initiating Africa's largest infrastructure project ever. Lesotho is a tiny, land-locked country, surrounded on all sides by South Africa. Replete with natural resources, Lesotho is one of the poorest countries in Africa. South Africa, where water demand is increasing, is the continent's economic powerhouse. Planners hope the cooperative dam project will satisfy the needs of both. When completed, the $8 billion Water Project will include a hydroelectric station and a series of dams and tunnels to transport water from Lesotho's highlands to Gauteng Province, the industrial center of South Africa. The first dam, Katse, is the size of a 52-story building, making it the largest dam on the continent. Construction of Katse and the second dam, Mohale, has already been completed.
The Economics
First conceived in 1954, the Lesotho Highlands Water Project went into effect in 1986, through a treaty signed between South Africa's apartheid government and Lesotho's military regime. Recent charges of corruption in the project's contracts have raised questions about the involvement of the World Bank, which approved and supported the project, and the bank's business associations. In 1999, a civil case brought in Lesotho against Masupha Sole, the water project's former chief executive, snowballed into a criminal trial that implicates 12 of the world's largest construction firms. So far, Acres International, a Canadian engineering consulting firm, and Lahmeyer International, a German engineering consulting firm, have been convicted of bribing Sole to give them favorable contracts. In August 2003, Acres International lost an appeal of its bribery conviction. The World Bank claims it will reexamine the evidence submitted during the trial and reevaluate whether Acres should be banned from receiving World Bank-sanctioned contracts. Masupha Sole is currently serving a 15-year prison sentence.
Human Displacement
In August 2003, the BBC reported that 30,000 Lesothians had been relocated to make way for the water project. Those affected by the project's first two dams have lost their homes, farm land, or communal grazing space, and reports from the country suggest many are unhappy with the relocation and compensation plans the water project has implemented so far. Dam proponents, however, point to the improvements in infrastructure that the project has brought -- roads, electricity, and telecommunications. Some 20,000 people have arrived to work in the once-isolated highlands region, as well as new homes and businesses. But, according to the International Rivers Network, with the new arrivals came more than economic growth: shanty towns, litter, and an increase in HIV/AIDS rates.
Environmental Concerns
Lesotho's highland watersheds make up 40 percent of the country's total land area. Only around nine percent of the country's land is arable, and with the creation of the project's dams, much arable and grazing land will be lost. (Critics have said that adequate water conservation measures could have postponed the need altogether to build Mohale for an estimated eight to 20 years.) There are also concerns about the impact downstream on South Africa's Orange River. Critics say the dams could divert nearly half of the river's flow, potentially affecting a number of endangered species that live in the area, including the Maloti minnow, rock catfish, and the bearded vulture, among others. Meanwhile, the reservoirs created by the steep nature of the Lesotho highlands are deep with a relatively small surface area, resulting in a lower loss of water through evaporation than usually occurs through damming.
Brazil: Belo Monte Dam
Brazil obtains over 90 percent of its energy from hydroelectric power. In the 1980s, backlash against such big dam projects coalesced in the form of the Brazilian Movement of Dam-Affected People (MAB), one of the only movements of its kind in the world. Conflicts between dam builders and dam protestors have escalated ever since. In 2001, six anti-dam activists who were working to prevent the construction of the Belo Monte dam were murdered. The Belo Monte Hydroelectric Complex is actually an adaptation of an old proposal to dam the Xingu River (a large tributary of the Amazon) that was dropped over 10 years ago in the face of international resistance. In terms of installed capacity, at 11,000 megawatts it would be the world's third largest hydropower plant.
The Economics
One of the most common accusations levied at Electronorte, the state-run power company creating the $6.6 billion Belo Monte complex, is that the dam won't function at full capacity during the Amazon region's lengthy dry season. In order to run at full power year round, the Belo Monte dam must be supplemented by additional dams upstream, which would then necessitate more construction and flooding, as well as the destruction of forest area and the homelands of indigenous peoples. Critics also say that the cost of the project has been underestimated, and refer to past dams, like the Tucuruí project, also in the Amazon, which was budgeted at $4.8 billion, but has cost more than $10 billion so far.
Human Displacement
Most of the thousands who would be affected by the Belo Monte Hydroelectric Complex are indigenous people. A number of indigenous tribes would be affected by the dam -- the farmland and the forests in which they live are slotted to be engulfed by the resulting reservoirs. According to anti-dam activists, these people are not being consulted about the fate of their homelands. The dam builders, however, say they have made efforts to minimize the project's impact on local inhabitants through consultation and by reworking the design to create smaller reservoirs.
Environmental Concerns
The Belo Monte Dam will be located deep in Brazil's Amazonian interior on the Xingu River, a major tributary of the Amazon. There are a number of potential problems with drastically altering the nature of the world's most richly diverse ecosystem, including possible threats to a number of species that exist nowhere else in the world. One concern arises from flooding a large expanse of rain forest to create a reservoir. Environmentalists suggest this process releases an inordinate amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when the submerged vegetation begins to rot. Electronorte claims the reservoir has been redesigned to incorporate two canals that would decrease the amount of flooded land by 65 percent; the excavation required to carry out these plans, they say, will be the largest since the Panama Canal. Dam defenders also argue that most of the land that will be swallowed up by the reservoir has already been deforested. Still, critics are just as concerned about problems stemming from the infrastructure that would accompany the construction of the dam. Roads built for the project in the '80s, for instance, have supposedly allowed illegal loggers to penetrate deeper into the Amazonian interior. Once development of the area begins, it will be hard to prevent land from being divided up and sold to large agricultural or industrial interests.
Laos: Nam Theun 2 Dam
The Mekong River flows from Tibet through Southeast Asia to Vietnam. It is the twelfth-longest river in the world and its fishery is second in diversity only to the Amazon. The Nam Theun 2 Dam in Laos is one of a number of dams scheduled to be built on the Mekong or one of its main tributaries. Located on the Nakai plateau in central Laos, the hydroelectric project would be the largest in Indochina, transporting water from the Theun River through a system of tunnels to the Xe Ban Fai River at the base of the plateau. Most of the dam's energy will be sold to Thailand; planners say the revenue generated from the project will be used to address social concerns in Laos.
The Economics
Finding investors for the $1.1 billion dam has been difficult. Dam critics have said the project is too large for Laos to handle, given that the cost is more than half as large as the country's $1.8 billion gross domestic product (2002). In 1997, the Asian financial crisis threw the first wrench in the project's plans. In July 2003, the dam endured a second major setback when major shareholder Electricité de France backed out of the project, stating its withdrawal was part of a strategy to limit its investments to European ventures. According to a Dow Jones report, Thai Energy Minister Prommin Lertsuridej stated that his country still intended to buy energy from the Nam Theun 2 Dam, but would only wait one year for the project to secure a replacement investor. Investors from Norway and Japan are reportedly interested in financing the project.
Human Displacement
Around 4,500 people would be displaced by the reservoir that will be created by the Nam Theun 2 Dam, and there are measures in place to assist the affected with their relocation. But according to dam critics, tens if not hundreds of thousands of people will be indirectly affected by the changes the dam will cause to the Theun and the Xe Ban Fai Rivers. In particular, below the dam the decreased flow of the Theun and increased flow of the Xe Ban Fai could have a detrimental effect on the fish populations that many depend on for their livelihoods. Additionally, there may be an increased risk of flooding in certain areas. Dam builders claim they will implement a 30-year watershed management program to protect the reservoir area.
Environmental Concerns
The Nam Theun 2 Dam would flood around a third of the Nakai plateau, an area of deciduous forest, semi-evergreen forest, secondary forest, seasonal wetlands, and permanent streams rich in biodiversity. A number of endangered animals inhabit the area, including the Asiatic black bear, the clouded leopard, the white-winged duck, a rare kind of deer known as the large-antlered Muntjac, and more than 50 species of birds on the verge of extinction. The World Bank claims the area has already been so deforested by logging that it is not worth saving. Yet dam activists argue that the area was logged by a military-run company called BPKP in preparation for the dam's reservoir and that before the World Bank decided to back the dam, the plateau had been part of a comprehensive conservation plan funded by the Dutch government and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the "green fund" managed by the World Bank itself.
© 2005, Educational Broadcasting Corporation, Inc.