In Brazil "Judge Allows Dam Construction to Continue" and in Chile...

ORIGINAL: ABC News 

(A Brazilian judge has revoked a decision that had halted some work on a massive hydroelectric dam in the Amazon jungle.)

ORIGINAL: The Santiago Times 

(Project approval last May was “irregular, arbitrary, and illegal” say environmentalists.)

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This breaks my heart. Dams are going to be built for the Xingu river in Brazil and for Baker and Pascua rivers in Chile...

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A Brazilian judge has revoked a decision that had halted some work on a massive hydroelectric dam in the Amazon jungle.

Federal judge Carlos Eduardo Martins halted construction on the $11-billion, 11,000-megawatt Belo Monte Dam in September, saying it would harm fishing on the Xingu River, which feeds the Amazon.

But on Friday, he ruled that construction could proceed because the Norte Energia consortium that is building the dam showed that the flow of the river would not be altered in a way that would harm the habitat of fish.

The judge's ruling has been posted on the court's website.

When completed, the dam would be the world's third largest behind China's Three Gorges dam and the Itaipu, which straddles the border of Brazil and Paraguay.

The government has said it will be a source of clean, renewable energy, and that it will help fuel the country's economy.

But environmentalists and indigenous groups say the dam would devastate wildlife and the livelihoods of 40,000 people who live in the area to be flooded.

The chief Raoni cries when he learns that brazilian president Dilma released the beginning of construction of the hydroelectric plant of Belo Monte, even after tens of thousands of letters and emails addressed to her and which were ignored as the more than 600,000 signatures. That is, the death sentence of the peoples of Great Bend of the Xingu river is enacted. Belo Monte will inundate at least 400,000 hectares of forest, an area bigger than the Panama Canal, thus expelling 40,000 indigenous and local populations and destroying habitat valuable for many species - all to produce electricity at a high social, economic and environmental cost, which could easily be generated with greater investments in energy efficiency. There's a petition you can sign against the building of the dam - here

Celebrities including British rock star Sting, film director James Cameron and actress Sigourney Weaver have joined activists in lobbying against the dam.

When Cameron participated in protests against the project in Brazil last year, he compared the anti-dam struggle by indigenous people to the plot of his film "Avatar," which depicts a natives of a planet fighting to protect their homeland from plans to extract its resources.

ORIGINAL: The Santiago Times

Project approval last May was “irregular, arbitrary, and illegal” say environmentalists.

A legal appeal to stop the US$10 billion HidroAysén dam and transmission line project will be heard today, Friday, by Chile’s Supreme Court.  The appeal follows a ruling by a Puerto Montt court that supported the government’s approval in May of the HidroAysén project.

The Baker river in Chilean Patagonia. Photo by Juan Pablo Garnham/Flickr

The May decision to greenlight HidroAysén sparked large public protests throughout Chile. The project envisions five dams on the Baker and Pascua rivers in Chile’s Patagonia region and will require a 1,900-km transmission line to bring the 2,750 MW of power to central and northern Chile. Proponents cite Chile’s growing energy needs, while those against the project say the massive dam technology will destroy one of the planet’s few remaining pristine environments and further concentrate the nation’s energy production in the hands of just three companies – assuring inefficient, costly energy prices well into the future.

Attorneys for Patagonia Sin Represas -  the umbrella NGO that has worked against the HidroAysén project for the past five years with significant local, national, and international support  -  will argue that the government’s decision last May to approve construction of the dams was “irregular, arbitrary, and illegal.”

Lead attorney Marcelo Castillo is expected to present seven challenges to the approval process, arguing that the HidroAysén did not provide sufficient data or baseline information to permit approval. The government’s alleged failure to reject an incomplete study is at the core of Castillo’s appeal.

Castillo will argue that of the 36 public services who reviewed HidroAysén’s environmental impact statement, 22, including the Director General de Aguas (General Director of Water) and CONAF (National Forest Corporation), said they couldn’t evaluate the company’s statement because of deficient information. But instead of rejecting the company’s environmental study, regional authorities allowed 3,000 comments and concerns to be gathered and returned to HidroAysén so the company could continue the process toward approval.

HidroAysén submitted four separate documents to the regional review body between August 2008 and April 2011: the original environmental impact study and three addenda in response to the comments received from the reviewers.

Even up to the third addendum, Rodrigo Solis Caro, regional ministry secretary for housing and urban development of Aysén, continued insisting that there was insufficient data and that he could not evaluate the project. But just two weeks later Solis wrote a final memo saying he was in complete agreement with the project’s approval. This abrupt reversal is one of the many irregularities Castillo hopes to use to undermine the project’s approval.

In the other six articles of appeal, Castillo will emphasize what he alleges are unscientific, dishonest and unconstitutional methods used by HidroAysén and the reviewing authority to assure the project’s approval.

The attorney’s arguments are expected to center on the following issues:

1. HidroAysén’s approval violates an international treaty

Chile, as a signatory of the Washington Convention of 1940, has agreed to uphold and protect the sanctity of their national parks and reserves. But one of the dams proposed for the Baker River would flood 18 hectares of Laguna San Rafael National Park.

According to Pilar Valenzuela, environmental engineer and technical advisor for Patagonia Sin Represas, “The amount that would be flooded is not as important as the blatant violation of the principle of not touching national parks. The impact that has is unquantifiable.”

2. HidroAysén’s data is unscientific

Aerial surveys were used to tally the amount of huemuls, a near-extinct deer native species living around the Pascua River. Biologists say that this way of conducting a study is inappropriate, adding that the company’s proposed mitigation plan is inadequate and should have been rejected. “Huemul do not adapt quickly,” Castillo said. The conservation area that HidroAysen proposes building to recreate the deer’s habitat would be “like moving you out of your 1,000-square-foot apartment into a 100-square-foot-apartment, and with none of the food you like to eat, and with new predators that you don’t know how to defend against. They won’t make it.”

3. The project is unconstitutional

Castillo will argue Friday to the Supreme Court that the approval of the environmental study violates the constitutional rights of Chilean citizens to live in a pollution-free environment, as well as to maintain the areas it has set aside for protection, such as Laguna San Rafael National Park.

4. Citizens excluded from review process

Castillo will also argue that the government’s reviewing authority “arbitrarily” shortened the length of the public participation phase in 2008 and did not consider the 10,000 comments that were submitted by private citizens.

5. Social impact of HidroAysén have been ignored

The social impact of bringing 2,500–5,000 workers, mostly men, into the town of Cochrane was never satisfactorily addressed in HidroAysén’s report.  Valenzuela summarized the unanswered concerns: “HidroAysen says the workers will stay in their camp, completely apart from the town. But the camp will be dry – no alcohol. No women, either, or few. And these workers are going to have days off. It’s ludicrous to assume that they won’t go into Cochrane and Coyhaique for entertainment.”

6.Incomplete Assessment

The dams under discussion are only half of the project HidroAysen is attempting to complete. The project also envisions a 1,900-km transmission line to carry energy created by the dams to the central part of Chile and then northward. The transmission line project is expected to be submitted for the same review process in March 2012. Patagonia Sin Represas maintains that because HidroAysén divided the project and presented the dams and transmission line as two separate projects, the environmental impact study was incomplete from the beginning, and should not have been approved.

The Supreme Court is expected to  take one to three months to reach a decision on the appeal.   Proceedings began at the Supreme Court at 9 a.m. and are open to the public.

By Susan Munroe (editor@santiagotimes.cl) 

Copyright 2011 – The Santiago Times