patagonia without dams (selected information) ·...
TRANSCRIPT
Patagonia Without Dams (Patagonia Sin Represas)
What’s the issue?
• Several multinational corporations have proposed a series of five dams on two rivers in remote Patagonia, Chile.
• The dams would require the construction of more than 1,500 miles of transmission lines, requiring the world’s longest clear-‐cut through globally rare forests and roadless wilderness.
• Thousands of acres of native forest and wetlands, including rare wildlife, would be flooded and destroyed if the dams are approved.
• International Rivers works with Chilean and international organizations in the Council to Defend Patagonia (Consejo de Defensa de la Patagonia), a coalition of more than 50 diverse civil society groups from Chile and around the world working to protect Patagonia.
http://www.internationalrivers.org
Patagonia Without Dams
The New York Times, Editorial
April 1, 2008
Recently, environmental activists and local residents gathered near the small Chilean town of Cochrane to protest a plan to build a series of hydroelectrical dams. Cochrane is part of Chilean Patagonia, and it would be transformed beyond recognition if the project goes ahead. But the change in Cochrane would be nothing compared with the change in Patagonia.
The dams — two on the Baker River and three on the Pascua — would irretrievably damage one of the wildest and most beautiful places on earth. Building the dams would also mean building a thousand-‐mile power-‐line corridor northward toward the Chilean capital, Santiago — the longest clear-‐cut on the planet and a scar across some of Chile’s most alluring landscape. Most of the electricity generated by the project would go not to residential use but to mining and industry.
In a sense, the proposed dams are a relic of the Pinochet government, which privatized water rights in Chile. The Chilean subsidiary of a Spanish company, Endesa, now owns the rights and is pressing the project. Chile’s democratically elected government is allowing it to move forward. The government has postponed the release of an environmental assessment until June. It needs to reconsider the project entirely.
Chile desperately needs new energy sources. The country is experiencing a severe energy crisis because of drought, a sharp reduction in natural gas imports from Argentina and the global escalation in oil prices. Some power plants, once fueled by natural gas, are now burning diesel fuel, an economically drastic alternative.
Destroying these rivers and the life that depends on them is no solution. Too often, the energy problem in Chile is framed as a choice between building dams or turning to nuclear energy. Solving this crisis responsibly will take a willingness also to explore other renewable sources like solar, wind and geothermal power.
Building large-‐scale hydroelectric dams is an old-‐world way of obtaining energy. It is too late in the environmental life of this planet to accept such ecologically destructive energy solutions or the model of unfettered growth they are meant to fuel.
The Chilean government would do well to reconsider these shortsighted plans, as would the international owners of the rights to the water in these rivers.
HidroAysén's Severely Flawed Environmental Study
http://www.internationalrivers.org/hidroays%C3%A9ns-‐severely-‐flawed-‐environmental-‐study
In late August 2008, the Chilean-‐European company-‐-‐HidroAysén-‐-‐planning to dam Chile’s Baker and Pascua rivers submitted an environmental study (EIA) for review by Chilean public services. Thirty-‐two public services participated in this review, which identified more than 3,000 problems with the EIA. Here is a summary of the most glaring deficiencies found in the EIA by Chile’s public services:
MAPPING DEFICIENT. The EIA contains insufficient mapping to show precisely where the project works, including reservoirs to be created by each dam, would be located.
REQUIRED FLOODING LEVELS NOT PROVIDED. The EIA failed to specify the minimum and maximum flooding levels expected from each proposed dam's reservoir. This basic information is required for testing the accuracy of the company's own estimates for the area that would be flooded by its project.
IMPACTS ON PRODUCTIVE SOILS IGNORED. The company’s EIA included no studies on productive soils and no mapping to identify productive soils in areas that would be impacted by the project. These omissions left Chilean public services with two significant problems. First, without a soils study or sufficiently detailed mapping, no evaluation of the project's potential impacts on productive soils was possible.
Second, productivity of soils in the impacted areas could not be compared with productivity of soils in areas to which displaced persons would be relocated. This difference in soil productivity would be one very important part of the project's impact on Aysen residents who are in the way of the project. Most of them earn their living off the land.
SEISMIC RISKS IGNORED. Chile is one of the most seismically active countries in the world. The region in which the project would be located, Aysen, has recently experienced damaging seismic events. Despite the existence of numerous fault lines and other unstable geology in the region, the EIA did not even attempt to describe potential seismic risks that could lead to catastrophic loss of life in the areas where the dams and related structures would be located.
HYDROLOGICAL RISKS IGNORED, e.g. GLOFs (Glacial Lake Outburst Floods) and LANDSLIDES. A GLOF results in a sudden and potentially catastrophic release of accumulated melt water from one or more glaciers. GLOFs and landslides are hydrological risk events that could create dam breaching or overtopping events that would endanger downstream communities and ecosystems and threaten the viability of the project. The HidroAysen EIA included no analysis or information on possible GLOF or landslide risks. Ignoring these risks could lead to catastrophic loss of human life. For example, in 1963, a landslide event led to a catastrophic failure of the Vaiont dam and killed thousands of people in an alpine valley of northern Italy. The geo-‐hydrological conditions that led to the Vaiont dam failure are very similar to those that exist in the areas where HidroAysen has proposed to dam the Baker and Pascua rivers.
SOCIAL IMPACTS IGNORED OR UNDERESTIMATED.
• The EIA contains no information on relocation of people, even though the project would undoubtedly require these relocations.
• The project would require construction over a period of at least twelve years and a temporary worker population that would exceed 5,000 at its peak. Nevertheless, the EIA description of worker camps is superficial. The study neither identifies the potential impacts of these worker camps, nor does it describe a commitment or plan to mitigate whatever these impacts would be.
• The potential for dramatic increases in vehicular traffic, including extremely large and heavy vehicles and machinery, is completely ignored in the EIA.
• Impacts from transportation of material, fuel and hazardous waste required by the project are not addressed.
• The EIA consistently underestimates its area of influence. For example, it fails to include all the territory that would be impacted in the Provinces of Capitán Prat and General Carrera. The EIA does not describe impacts that would be specific to communities such as Villa O'Higgins and Caleta Tortel. The potential for a dramatic increase in demand for education and other public services is ignored.
• The project would require new coastal port facilities, plus new roads and the expansion of existing roads, and the project would lead to a dramatic increase in demands on existing airport facilities. These public works impacts of the project are ignored in the EIA.
PROTECTED AREAS LAWS VIOLATED. This was either obvious from the EIA (admitted potential flooding in San Rafael National Park) or the potential for violation was not addressed as required (in the case of Bernardo O'Higgins and Lago Cochrane protected areas). It is improper under Chilean law for an EIA to propose plans that would violate the law or to ignore the clear potential that these plans would violate Chilean law.
IMPACTS ON ON FAUNA and FLORA IGNORED. The EIA was either grossly negligent or intentionally uninformative in these areas. For example, estimates for terrestrial wildlife numbers were based upon only 23 days of fieldwork performed exclusively in the area's best weather for humans. This is a woefully inadequate number of observation days in unrepresentative conditions in only two consecutive years. Further, techniques for detecting hard-‐to-‐observe wildlife (e.g., the critically endangered huemul deer), such as aerial reconnaissance, were not used. Because of insufficient fieldwork, many wildlife estimates in the EIA are not even close to being scientifically valid. And the EIA was even worse on potential impacts for flora.
The EIA presented no overall analysis of all the factors determining the presence of vegetation in a given zone, and the study did not even attempt to identify potential linkages between flora of the zone and project activities. The EIA did not even present one simple chart of vegetation in the zone that could have been used by the public services on their own to assess possible impacts on flora.
IMPACTS ON TOURISM and TOURISM IMAGE OF THE REGION IGNORED. Even though it is clear to SERNATUR, Chile's tourism agency, that the project's damage to the region's image for tourism would be considerable, the company’s EIA states explicitly that it will not address potential impacts on the region's image for tourism. Further, the EIA presents no landscape details on the basis of which a public service might on its own estimate possibly specific examples of impacts on tourism and the region's image for tourism. Though the region is known to be attractive for 'adventure tourism' (e.g., kayaking, rafting, trekking), the EIA does not even mention it. Sport fishing is also a known tourist attraction of the region, but the EIA does not address how much potential for this kind of fishing would still exist after the wild, scenic and free-‐flowing river that attracts this kind of fishing is transformed by
the proposed dams into a series of lakes. Finally, the EIA presents no data or analysis on how much tourism income each of the region's communities receives, or on how much each community has invested in attracting and serving tourism.
Allison Silverman’s Blog
The HydroAisen Mega Dam Project is Completely Unnecessary... and You Know What? So Are the Other Non-‐Renewable Energy Projects in Chile
Posted July 2, 2009 in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
I am thrilled to announce the findings of a groundbreaking energy study that shows the HydroAisen mega-‐dam project is completely unnecessary! Today in Santiago, the Patagonia Defense Council, of which NRDC is a member, will launch an energy study, ¿Se Necesitan Represas en La Patagonia? Un Análisis del Futuro Energético Chileno (Are Dams Necessary in Patagonia? An Analysis of Chile's Energy Future), which will help further the debate about Chile's energy future. The timing could not be better as the Presidential candidates continue to vie for popularity among a growing majority of Chileans who disapprove of HydroAisen.
This study is a momentous achievement as we have been collaborating with Chilean partner organizations to protect Patagonia and promote sustainable energy policies in Chile for the past few years. When we first got involved in 2006, the HydroAisen project -‐-‐ five massive hydroelectric dams generating 2,750 MW of power and 18,430 GWh/year of electricity on two of Chile's wildest rivers in the Patagonia region -‐-‐ was framed as Chile's only opportunity to ensure that Chile economy would continue to grow and that there would be enough energy to supply Chile's growing demands. However, we never believed that destroying Patagonia would be the only way to satiate Chile's energy requirements. I am glad that we trusted our instinct and looked at the proposal with a critical eye as we were correct.
Last August a study was launched that took a hard look at Chile's energy matrix. This study found that renewable energy and energy efficiency should be considered a viable and important resource to supplying Chile's energy. Since this study's publication, the Environmental Review Assessment for the HydroAisen proposal was highly criticized and sent back for revisions; and, the Patagonia Defense Council recognized that in fact it could be proven that building destructive, massive hydroelectric dams are unnecessary considering Chile's other feasible and economically competitive opportunities.
Today, this new technical analysis, Are Dams Necessary in Patagonia? An Analysis of Chile's Energy Future, carried out by Chilean and Canadian energy experts definitively articulates
that HydroAisen is completely uncalled for and superfluous. The study provides a thorough investigation of Chile's emerging portfolio of energy projects through 2025 -‐-‐ Chile's existing energy profile, future projects that are already approved, and future supply and demand trends. Here are the study's key findings:
1. Even using conservative "Business as Usual" models, HydroAisen's output will be unneeded. By 2025, there will be more than enough energy generated between the projects currently under construction and already approved for development to supply all of Chile's demands without HydroAisen, and without taking any extra energy efficiency or renewable energy measures.
• By the year 2025, Chile will require 22,736 MW and 105,560 GWh/year according to a business-‐as-‐usual scenario.
• Considering only those projects currently approved by Chile's National Environmental Commission, there will be 23,143 MW and 124,626 GWh/year.
• According to a more updated scenario, Chile will only require 18,452 MW
• In either the "business-‐as-‐usual" scenario or the more updated one, integrating energy efficiency measures and renewable energy sources into the model results in a 23% supply surplus over the projected demand.
2. Chile's predicted energy demand growth published in April 2008 has decreased significantly due to the global economic recession. Before 2008, when the country experienced a robust economy, energy demand was estimated to grow at rates of 5.5% to 6.5% annually until 2025. Since the onset of the recession, many of Chile's key industries, such as mining and construction, have suffered, negatively affecting these rates. Chile's National Energy Commission has even readjusted its prediction for 2009 to a 2.1% growth from 4.7%. The result in the adjusted forecast is a reduction in the need for installed power by 4,000 MW.
3. The global recession provides a three-‐year window of opportunity during which Chile can reorient its entire national energy portfolio, enhancing its energy security, technological capital, and economic efficiency and environmental responsibility. Based on an energy study published in July 2008,* Chile possesses great potential in energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. This 2009 analysis also finds that Chile's geography is particularly well-‐suited for solar and geothermal exploration. The results show that if measures are enacted soon to increase energy efficiency, 40% of the approved coal projects can be eliminated from Chile's future energy matrix. It also illustrates that if Chile invests in energy efficiency and renewable technologies now, the energy demand forecast for 2025 decreases to just 18,452 MW.
• There are 2,719 MW and 12,799 GWh/year associated with renewable energy projects, mainly geothermal, biomass, wind, concentrated solar and photovoltaic energy
• There are 3,041 MW and 19,817 GWh/year of identified opportunities in energy efficiency that are economically viable.
4. The successful implementation of efficiency and renewable technologies will depend on government policies and programs. The report highlights several specific measures that the government can take to increase their competitiveness in the market, including the need to increase the Renewable Energy Standard via Public Law 20.257 from 10% to 25% in 2025.
It also encourages developing and implementing minimum energy efficiency standards, a framework for integrated planning and resource development, and a plan to modernize the electric grid.
5. The costs of investing in HydroAisen are far greater than investing in a diverse portfolio of efficiency and renewable energy projects. In a life cycle analysis of the total costs, energy efficiency and renewable energy are more competitive than the dams and other conventional forms of energy. Moreover, the assertion that the only plausible choices are the HydroAisen project and coal fired plants, which are both environmentally harmful, is false. The better solution is to diversify Chile's energy matrix with economically viable energy efficient practices and renewable energy projects.
Therefore, there is no need for the HydroAisen dam project to satiate Chile's energy demands.
The Are Dams Necessary in Patagonia? An Analysis of Chile's Energy Future study was carried out by Stephen Hall, an energy consultant from Canada with extensive experience in Chile, and Professor Roberto Roman of the University of Chile, a leading expert on renewable energy, and his team. The study was overseen and financially supported by the Patagonia Defense Council. NRDC and the Patagonia Foundation also provided funding for the study.
MAPS
The pin signals the proposed location for the 5 dams:
The Xs signal the proposed location for the five dams: