“This is not done here, we will continue to fight, but this feels worse than when the humans destroy the tree in the movie AVATAR,” lamented Luisa Aguas, from the local community organization Comunidad. On March 3 at approximately 5:37pm, Emgesa, affiliate of Spanish-Italian Energy Giant Enel-Endesa, announcedthat they had successfully begun the diverting of the Guacahayo-Yuma-Magdalena River from its natural course as part of the construction of the Quimbo Hydroelectric Project in Huila, Colombia. Project Manager Julio Santafé told local press that late Sunday the remaining rocks and dirt will be excavated from the tunnel where the river will be diverted through to enable the next phase of the project of building the dam. The complete diverting of the river should be completed by Monday.
“The diverting of the River will only make us stronger and will for sure, lead to the death of Emgesa” said Miller Dussan, ASOQUIMBO Investigator and Professor of the South Colombian University, next to the highway during the meeting. Dussan shared that “Senate Vice-President Alexander Lopez has already released his questionnaire investigating the Minister of the Interior, German Vargas Lleras, for claiming he could not do anything about the violent removals on the [Feb.] 14th and 15th when later the Mayor of Paicol informed that he was pressured to do so by Vargas Lleras. Vargas Lleras brother is José Antonio Vargas Lleras who is the director of CODENSA the Colombian affiliate that owns and operates Endesa affiliates Bogotá Electrical Company and Emgesa.
After being pushed back over a month from protests and strikes held by affected local populations by the dam, Saturday’s diverting was programmed for the morning. However, multiple direct actions in the area of the construction delayed the diverting to the late afternoon. Nearly 300 hundred campesinos, indigenous, students and youth faced off with riot police at the construction sites entrance near the damaged Paso del Colegio Bridge closing off traffic to the entrance of the site, eventually marching to the national highway. At the same time around 90 fisher-people up river of the dam site occupied the tunnel and surrounding beaches until they were apprehended and detained for some time before being released. The group that marched to the highway held a meeting and blockade until the end of the day and there is currently still an encampment of fisher-people up river of the site. Throughout the day internet cyber-activist Anonymous, as part of #OpQuimbo, was blocking the website for the Ministry of Mines, Emgesa and the Huila regional government.
Saturday’s actions were part of a series of protests and direct actions called for by the Association of the Affected of the Quimbo Hydroelectric Project –ASOQUIMBO that have been happening globally over the last week. In Huila the towns of Gigante, Garzón, La Plata and regional capitol Neiva, has seen thousands of grade-school students and youth take to the streets in marches paralyzing those urban centers. On national level solidarity actions in Bogotá, Cali, Pereira, Mocoa, and Medellin have taken place with calls to “flood the Ministry of Environment”. Internationally the support has come over the last week from protests or visits at Colombian Embassies in Miami, Washington DC & New York City, United States; Buenos Aires, Argentina and in London, UK. This next week there are more actions planned for Barcelona, Spain and second protest planned in Rome, Italy at the Enel Offices. All the actions have been in solidarity with the people of Huila and calling for a suspension of the Quimbo Dam and an end to the State violence used against protesters.
Since the violent removals of protesters from the bank of the river in Domingo Arias, Paicol on February 14 and 15, President Santos has publicly claimed that riot police used completely “normal procedures” and made no mention of the 7 people wounded, including one person who lost his right eye. He also stated that the “progress of the country would not be held back by personal interests”. During the day´s actions President Santo´s told media that the protests are “infiltrated by guerrillas” and “people not from the area”.
This comes a day after that President Santos receives the Hero of Environmental Conservation Award in Cartagena, presented to him by pro-business environmental organization Conservation International (CI). CI is best known for helping environmentally destructive corporations green-wash their image, while also being accused by indigenous communities of acts of biopiracy. Last week the new ranking for the 2012 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) of the world´s countries was released by Yale University and Colombia had dropped 17 spots (EPI).
During Saturday´s mobilization the Minister of Mines and Energy, Mauricio Cárdenas, told national media, that three of the country’s major hydroelectric projects—Ituango in Antioquia, Amoyá in Tolima and the Quimbo—were all being threatened with “sabotage” by political and armed forces opposed to the projects.
On a continental level, these mobilizations against hydroelectric projects have increased in recent months throughout South and Central America. Just last month protesters of the Ngobe-Buglé people were brutalized and left two people dead in protests in Panamá against mining and a planned Dam and the conflicts with Brazil´s mega dams in the Amazon Basin such as Belo Monte are on-going. In addition to the Quimbo Dam, Endesa is also damming rivers and creating multiple conflicts within Mapuche Territory along the Bio Bio River in Southern Chile and along the Chixoy River in Mayan Territory of Guatemala.
Also Saturday, the National Treasury announced that starting next week prosecutors from the Environmental Crimes and Anti-Corruption Unit will be opening an investigation to look into possible irregularities with the U$334 million contract that the Colombian government signed with companies Emgesa and Impregilo for the Quimbo Hydroelectric Project . The prosecutors will also look into allegations of environmental destruction, forced displacement and threats to local inhabitants. In the evening further south in the municipality of Timaná, approximately 60 milometers from the Quimbo site and the site of a future dam Emgesa hopes to build in Huila in the Pericongo Canyon, an earthquake hit the area with a rating of 3.5 on the Richter scale.
This week a statement is expected from the Comptroller’s Office regarding an on-going investigation since January of irregularities in the company’s census, compensation and resettlement of the affected population.
More marches are expected regionally and internationally on Tuesday, March 6 and ASOQUIMBO is maintaining its call for solidarity direct actions. Regionally the communities in resistance prepare for the next steps in the struggle for the defense of the Upper Guacahayo-Yuma-Magdalena River Valley.
While riding in the back of a truck in the rain leaving the site of the day´s actions, unemployed day laborer and part time fisher-woman Ximena Chavarro shared that “The State is leaving us very few options. It is disregarding and abusing its own laws and due process that protect us the inhabitants, our territory and the river which is everyone’s all to be able to secure Uribe´s ‘investor confidence’. Right now we all feel so violated and furious that we understand why others in similar situations resort to violence even though we have never wanted to go there.”
A major river in India’s northeast that originates in Tibet has suddenly dried up, triggering speculation that China might be responsible, a local official told AFP on Thursday.
The Brahmaputra has its source in China’s southwestern Tibet region where it is known as the Yarlung Tsangpo, and it enters India in the mountainous, remote northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, where it it is called the Siang.
The 1,800-mile (2,900 kilometre) river then descends into the plains of adjoining Assam state, where it is vital for agriculture, and ends in Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal.
“It was shocking to find the Siang river drying up and patches of sand visible on its bed in a very large stretch close to Pasighat town,” local state lawmaker Tako Dabi told AFP by telephone, referring to a town in East Siang district.
“We suspect the sudden drying up of the Siang could be a result of China either diverting the river water on their side or due to some artificial blockades somewhere in the upper reaches,” added Dabi, an advisor to the state’s chief minister.
He estimated the flow was about 40 percent of its normal strength.
Video footage from the scene shows the Siang — which is normally a gushing torrent several kilometres (miles) wide at Pasighat, according to Dabi — reduced to flowing in narrow channels in the large sandy riverbed.
“Locals are worried as the river is a source of livelihood,” Dabi added.
The problem with the river came on the day the Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jeichi held talks in New Delhi with his Indian counterpart S.M. Krishna.
India is extremely nervous about the danger of its giant northern neighbour diverting rivers that originate in Tibet and flow into India, or disrupting their flow with hydroelectric plants.
The two countries have held frequent talks about the issue at the highest level and Indian Premier Manmohanh Singh assured as recently as last August that there was no danger.
“We have been assured that nothing will be done which affects India’s interests adversely,” Singh told the upper house of parliament.
Energy-hungry and water-deficient China is building a hydroelectric plant on the Yarlung Tsangpo, but the Indian government says it has been assured this is a “run-of-the-river” project rather than a dam which would disrupt the flow.
A hole was blasted in the base of the 125-foot-tall Condit Dam on the White Salmon River in Washington. In less than 2 hours, the reservoir behind the dam drained completely and the White Salmon flowed unimpeded by a dam for the first time in 100 years.
NHPC’s 2000-MW Lower Subansiri hydro-electric project is likely to face more resistance in the coming days, with hundreds of anti-dam activists resolving on Thursday to launch a total blockade of all construction materials for the project. The agitators took the pledge in the presence of Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar.
The firebrand activist, addressing an anti-dam public rally in Lakhimpur district’s Chawldhuwaghat, said the “relentless” people’s movement against the Lower Subansiri project has become an all-India struggle against large dams.
“I salute your persistent agitation against large dams to save the Subansiri river. It is not only your movement. It is an all-India movement. The people of the Narmada and Brahmaputra valleys are united in the struggle against large dams,” Patkar said, amid thunderous clapping from the crowd.
During the rally, Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) general secretary Akhil Gogoi announced that the next phase of the stir would start from March 10, and would entail a total blockade of all construction materials for the project.
Akhil told the crowd, “The next phase of the movement will be a tougher one. Be ready to face the bullets. We are going to stop the movement of construction material by any means. We will prolong our movement till the rainy season. Once the rainy season starts, work at the project site will stop automatically.”
The crowd, also comprising a sizeable number of women, cheered in chorus as the KMSS leader announced the next phase of the movement. Later, the anti-dam supporters took a pledge at the Subansiri river that they would not allow the construction of the hydro-electric project.
Work at the project site virtually came to a halt following a series of agitations by anti-dam groups since December 16 last year. The new phase of agitation indicates that the builder of the Lower Subansiri project, NHPC, will face even stiffer opposition in executing the work of the project. The project’s date of commissioning has already been postponed to 2014.
Senior citizens and the intelligentsia have also called a meeting on the issue of large dams and their impact on Assam here on February 26 and 27.
Federal public prosecutors in Brazil have challenged a plan to strip protected status from 86,288 hectares of land to make way for five new dams, reports International Rivers. The challenge is set to be heard by Brazil’s Supreme Court, according to the group, which is campaigning against new hydroelectric projects in environmentally-sensitive areas.
The prosecutors, known as the Ministério Publico Federal (MPF), filed a complaint against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on the grounds that eliminating the protected areas violates Brazil’s Constitution and its environmental legislation. The lead prosecutor, Roberto Monteiro Gurgel Santos, said that the hydroelectric projects lack requisite environmental impact studies.
São Luiz do Tapajós and Jatobá, a pair of dams on the Tapajós river, would affect 75,000 hectares alone, including 17,800 hectares in the Amazonia National Park, 36,158 ha in the Itaituba 1 and Itaituba 2 National Forests, 856 ha in Crepori National Forest, and 19,916 hectares ha in the Tapajos Environmental Protection Area. Meanwhile 8,470 hectares would be excluded from the Mapinguari National Park for the Jirau and Santo Antônio dams on the Madeira River, and 2,188 acres would be excised from the Campos Amazônicos National Park for the Tabajara dam on the Machado River.
The order to reduce the extent of the protected areas is in question. The Rousseff Administration says the move was proposed by ICMBio, the federal environmental agency, but International Rivers says internal memos from the local staff of ICMBio “expressed direct opposition to the proposal”.
“According to them, the reduction of protected areas, in the absence of socio-economic and environmental assessments of impacts and risks, is likely to cause tremendous damage to the region’s biodiversity, including endemic and endangered species, and to the livelihoods of local populations,” said International Rivers in a statement.
Brazil is in the midst of a dam-building spree in the Amazon — some 60 hydroelectric projects are planned for the region, including the massive Belo Monte dam on the Xingu river. Brazilian construction firms are also actively pursuing projects on Amazon tributaries in neighboring countries, including Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador.
Brazil says the dams represent a source of clean, renewable energy, but critics maintain the dams displace local people, disrupt fisheries, and flood large tracts of forest, contributing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
