Chilean protestors clash with police as regulators approve five-dam project in Patagonia
Chile approved on Monday the construction of a hydroelectric project that would flood Patagonian valleys and become the country’s biggest power generator, sparking violent protests.
The HidroAysen project would generate 35% of Chile’s current power consumption.
Police fired water cannons at demonstrators outside the building in the city of Coyhaique where 11 of the 12 members of an environment commission voted in favour of the HidroAysen project that Santiago-based Empresa Nacional de Electricidad SA and Colbun SA (COLBUN) want to build.
HidroAysen’s five dams would flood nearly 6,000 hectares of land and require a 1,900 kilometre transmission line to feed the central grid that supplies Santiago and surrounding cities as well as copper mines owned by Codelco and Anglo American Plc. The government of President Sebastian Piñera says Chile needs more hydroelectric and coal- fired plants to meet demand that will double in the next decade and reduce power costs that are the highest in the region.
“We have to get that energy somewhere, independent of what the project is, because energy today is twice as expensive as in other Latin American countries,” Ena Von Baer, the government’s spokeswoman, told reporters in Santiago. “We want to be a developed country and to do that we need energy, especially cheap energy for the poor.
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Also, if you haven't already, read Fred Pearce's When the Rivers Run Dry: Water -- The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century to learn why new dams anywhere in the world might be a bad idea.
Read about the deficiencies of the environmental impact studies, including insufficient mapping, no studies on productive soils, no mapping to identify productive soils in areas that would be impacted, potential seismic risks, hydrological risk events, no information on relocation of people, superficial description of worker camps, no studies on increases in vehicular traffic, including extremely large and heavy vehicles and machinery, transportation of material, fuel and hazardous waste, no analysis of public works impacts, violation of protected area laws, impact on fauna & flora, impact on tourism.
