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Feared Expansion of Hydroelectric Dam |
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NGOs maintain that increasing the levels of the reservoir of the Yacyretá dam on the Paraguay-Argentina border will have serious environmental consequences. The authorities assure that they will relocate the residents and various species of plants and animals from the affected area.
BUENOS AIRES - The governments of Argentina and Paraguay have resolved to complete the binational Yacyretá hydroelectric dam on the Paraná River by 2007, operating at 60 percent of originally planned capacity. Environmentalists fear that the expansion will increase the harm already caused by the mega-project.
Yacyretá was born out of a treaty signed in 1973, and the initial commitment was for operations to begin in 1980, but was not inaugurated until 1994.
According to the original project, the reservoir covering 1,600 square km would be maintained at 83 meters above sea level, but for the past 10 years the level has stood at around 76 meters.
"In order for the dam to produce at full potential, the waterfall must be higher, as was originally defined. That is why the level must be raised to 83 meters," Alfredo Durán, communications director of the Binational Yacyretá Enterprise (EBY), told Tierramérica.
The decision to increase the reservoir level implies a series of new construction works at an estimated cost of 500 million dollars. Argentine President Néstor Kirchner and his Paraguayan counterpart Nicanor Duarte Frutos gave the green light to these pending projects in late February.
Both expressed their determination to complete the Yacyretá project, but stressed that the hydroelectric dam -- referred to as a "monument to corruption" by former Argentine president Carlos Menem (1989-1999) -- must be managed with "transparency", and so annulled a million-dollar assessment contract that the two countries had been paying for years.
A forum of more than 40 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from the two countries, which are campaigning so that the Yacyretá project will take responsibility for the environmental problems it creates, and not produce new ones, applauded the annulment but warned about other costs in an open letter to Kirchner and Duarte Frutos.
"Raising the level of the reservoir to 83 meters above sea level will have serious additional social and environmental impacts to those already produced and for which reparations have not yet been made," say the NGOs in their statement.
"The cost of hydroelectric energy is much greater than was calculated if the costs of repairing the damages caused are taken into account."
A weak point in the plan for finalizing work on the project is the possibility that there exists an underground connection of water between the reservoir and the Iberá wetlands in the northern Argentine province of Corrientes, just meters from the reservoir and covering 24,550 hectares.
Silvia González, coordinator of the wetlands program for the Argentine Wildlife Foundation (Fundación Vida Silvestre), told Tierramérica there is "uncertainty" with respect to the causes of the increased water levels of the Iberá wetlands. The foundation's experts believe the phenomenon is related to "events" at the Yacyretá.
"That isn't true," asserts EBY spokesman Durán, based on reports from the Varsa company, which is conducting environmental impact studies for the dam. The firm assures there is no such underground connection between the reservoir and the wetlands, and that the latter simply increases when there is more rainfall.
In fact, said Durán, there is currently a shortage of water in the Iberá area due to drought.
The NGOs are demanding that the reservoir expansion plan include relocation of human settlements and of wild flora and fauna from the area to be flooded, and argue that these issues have been mishandled previously.
According to EBY, around 11,000 specimens of 110 species have been moved to protected areas.
"The biomass clean-up that was to be made of the area before filling the reservoir was insignificant," Paraguayan journalist Ramón Casco Carreras told Tierramérica. He is an economics columnist for the ABC Color newspaper in his country and an opinion leader in economic and environmental issues.
"The World Bank allowed that to happen, and then admitted its responsibility," which has led that institution and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) "to be much more demanding" in terms of environmental and social impacts of mega-projects, he said.
Casco estimates that the total number of people displaced by the Yacyretá reaches 40,000, but noted that the delay in work on the project meant that some cleared areas were repopulated when the flooding of the reservoir did not reach them.
The EBY announced that new relocation efforts must be made due to the increase in the reservoir level, and that 11,000 new homes will be built for the displaced families.
The initial costs of the Yacyretá were calculated at around one billion dollars, but Argentina has contracted a debt for the project that -- with interest -- already reaches 10 billion dollars, said Durán.
The new work on the mega-project is to be financed by the IDB and the sales of electricity.
* Marcela Valente is an IPS correspondent. Alejandro Sciscioli contributed to this report from Paraguay.
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