The Ohio River is the most polluted river in the United States. In this series of essays entitled ‘The Ohio River Speaks,‘ Will Falk travels the length of the river and tells her story. Read the first, second, third, fourth and fifth part of Will’s journey.
The Kinzua Dam forms the Allegheny Reservoir, a few miles east of Warren, PA. Two days before the Fourth of July, I studied the dam and reservoir from a parking lot built on the southern edge of the dam. I was angry. Below me, motorboats and jet skis ripped across the water. Classic rock and pop country playlists clashed as parties raged on pontoon boats. Behind me, motorcycles carrying humans on holiday rides tore down the highway. The noise foreshadowed the fireworks that would soon light up the nation. Hearing the exploding fuel in combustion engines racing around me, and imagining the fireworks’ gunpowder that would soon be exploding across the sky, I wondered why my fellow Americans blow so much shit up when they celebrate.
The star-spangled banner flying over a Seneca Nation flag on a pole above me caused me to consider whether Americans actually believe fireworks put on a better show than the setting sun or whether fireworks are so beloved because they remind Americans of “the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air” and their favorite pastime, colonial warfare.
The anger grew as I studied the 1900 feet of concrete, steel, gravel, and dirt that stretches between two hills and stands 179 feet tall to trap the Ohio River.
I scanned the Allegheny Reservoir until it disappeared behind more hills. I knew, from previous research, that the Allegheny Reservoir sprawled northwards into southern New York for 27 miles and reached depths of 120 feet. I knew, too, that Seneca land had been destroyed when the reservoir was formed. Meanwhile, the sounds of Styx – that river in Hell and an accursedly annoying rock band – playing “Come Sail Away” competed with Shania Twain’s “That Don’t Impress Me Much.” Singalongs and drunken laughter, amplified by the water, drifted up to me. Shania’s mood matched mine best. I asked the Ohio River how anyone could party in the midst of such destruction.
Eventually the boats turned a corner formed by the hills and vanished. The wind blew across the Allegheny Reservoir leaving a delicate wake. The reflection of the hills in the water danced and waved. The water enchanted me. I tried to picture what was under the water. And, that’s when the Ohio River’s answer came to me.
People can party in the midst of this destruction, they can drive their jet skis over indigenous burial grounds, they can dance on pontoon boats floating over stolen land because so much truth, today, is submerged. Truth is submerged by history. Truth is submerged by ideology and cultural conditioning. Truth is submerged by popular ignorance of the processes destroying the planet. Truth is literally submerged like Seneca land under the Allegheny Reservoir.
The history of the Kinzua Dam and Allegheny Reservoir submerges many truths.
These truths include theft of Native land, the forcible removal of Native people, and another treaty to add to the long list of broken promises the federal government has made to Native Americans. In 1936, the infamous St. Patrick’s Day Flood washed over the Ohio River Basin. Floods like the St. Patrick’s Day Flood had, for years, directly threatened Pittsburgh, one of America’s most important industrial cities at the time. Instead of considering whether it was prudent to allow massive human populations to congregate in areas prone to powerful floods, Congress responded with the Flood Control Acts of 1936 and 1938 and authorized the Kinzua Dam.
The completion of the Kinzua Dam in 1965 and the formation of the Allegheny Reservoir drowned 10,000 acres of the Seneca Nation’s most fertile lands. That 10,000 acres represented one third of the territory promised to the Seneca under the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua signed by George Washington himself. The formation of the dam also required the removal of around 600 Senecas from their ancestral homelands.
Living Senecas were removed. And, so were some of the Seneca dead. In 1964, in an act of utter disrespect, the United States Army Corps of Engineers attempted to dig up the remains of one of the most famous Seneca war chiefs, Cornplanter, as well as the remains of more than 300 of his kin and descendants. If that wasn’t bad enough, apparently the Corps of Engineers did such a questionable job, that many Seneca wonder whether Cornplanter was ever truly moved and whether his resting place has been drowned by reservoir.
Truths are also submerged in plain sight by an ignorance of the industrial processes necessary to construct the Kinzua Dam.
Concrete is a good example. Despite being surrounded by concrete, I had never asked where concrete comes from. It turns out that concrete is one of the most destructive materials on earth. Using a study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a Guardian article I found estimated that concrete now outweighs the combined carbon mass of every tree, bush, and shrub on the planet. In simpler terms, there may be more concrete on Earth than plants.
According to London’s Royal Institute of International Affairs, the production of cement – a key ingredient in concrete – is responsible for 8 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. And, perhaps most pertinent to the Ohio River, concrete sucks up almost a 10th of the world’s industrial water use. But, how is concrete made? It starts with ripping limestone, clay, sand, and other aggregates from the earth. Wild beings live in communities where this limestone, clay, and sand is ripped from the earth. So, this extraction destroys these beings’ homes. Extracting and transporting these materials requires industrial energy and produces dust pollution as well as greenhouse gas emissions.
Industrial energy production involves ripping fossil fuels from the earth, produces toxic waste, and also destroys habitat.
The limestone, clay, sand, and other aggregates must be crushed and mixed with water to a certain proportion. This crushing and mixing process also requires industrial energy, produces emissions, and consumes water. The mixture is then heated to around 2700 degrees Fahrenheit to decompose the limestone and produce what is called “clinker.” This heating process again requires industrial energy, produces emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, emissions from the burning of the aggregates, and hazardous waste. After the clinker is created, it is quickly cooled and ground up. The rapid cooling process requires industrial energy and the grinding process produces dust pollution.
The ground clinker is now dry cement which is bagged, shipped, and distributed to work sites. Bagging produces waste and involves paper production which requires deforestation. Shipping and distribution require energy for transportation which again produces emissions. Finally, the dry cement is mixed with potable water and another type of extracted aggregate including quarried stone, fly ash, slag, and sometimes recycled concrete. In other words, when I looked at the Kinzua Dam’s concrete, I was looking at a destructive process involving thousands of people engaged in dozens of ecocidal activities that produced all kinds of pollutants and consumed water, the most precious necessity of life.
After I learned how concrete was made, when I looked at the Kinzua Dam, I couldn’t help but see the gaping wounds quarries cut into the land, the lungs microscopically shredded by tiny rock fragments in dust pollution, and the water stolen from creeks, streams, and rivers only to be trapped for centuries in blocks of concrete.
Uncovering these submerged truths made me angrier.
I fantasized about sinking pontoon boats, pouring sugar in jet ski gas tanks, and slashing motorcycle tires. I fantasized about the ghost of Cornplanter drilling holes in the Kinzua Dam. I fantasized about the Ohio River gathering her power to overwhelm and destroy the dam.
While I pictured the Ohio River bursting through the Kinzua Dam, I noticed a sound my ears had not picked up before. So far, I had only viewed the dam from the east side, the side trapping the river. This new sound beckoned me to view the dam from the west. As I moved westward, I heard a growing roar. Then, on the dam’s west side, I saw the Ohio River gushing out of two floodgates. The sound was roughly similar to the sound a waterfall makes. But, it was not the same.
Rivers choose to leap from waterfalls. They shout with joy as they jump from cliffs and over stones. They thunder while proudly showing off the full power of their flow. At the Kinzua Dam, the Ohio River was not free to choose. She was forcibly squeezed through pipes called penstocks to turn hydroelectric generating turbines. Then, she was shoved from a ledge to slam into a concrete drainage control bed.
As I listened, I knew the Ohio River was screaming with anger. The hills rang with her rage. In this rage, I heard her explain how I could put the anger I was feeling to good use. She told me to dive into the depths and give voice to submerged truths.
Featured image: Resistance. Acrylic on canvas. 2008. By Travis London. “With the successful devastation of the Washougal River watershed through intense logging and mineral extraction, there was only one thing left to do: install hydroelectric dams. In the early 1920s, construction of a third dam began down river from the outlet of Cougar Creek. The night the dam had been completed it was blown up. Dynamite reduced the structure to rubble and once again the salmon, eels, and crayfish passed unhindered.”
To this day, the Washougal River remains free flowing and supports populations of chum, coho, and chinook salmon, steehead, and cutthroat trout.
Truth
By John McGrath, 2004
Who will be the keepers of the flame,
when shepherds shame their flock and mock
the truth with every new transgression?
Should we be surprised to find a fork in every tongue
of young and old, when those who lead us
feed us daily, lies of such a size
we barely blink at indiscretion any more
from rank deceivers rotten to the core.
Yet some would call them heroes, after all
they’ve said and done
with word and deed, the very need
to justify themselves long gone.
Who will be the guardians of the light?
When might is right and wrongs are sanctified,
when innocence is maimed and sacrificed
in Freedom’s name,
when none will take the blame,
when every lie is truth and truth is lie,
Who then will be the keepers of the flame,
save you and I?
No, we are not going to Mars
A poem about stupid ideas
By Monique Milne
Some philosophers say
You define a thing by the context it’s in.
So, what then … is a polar bear in a zoo?
Or a human on Mars?
Am I the sum of my parts? Something more? Something separate?
They say bacteria are us
Or we have bacteria.
A sterilised planet has no life
Has no bacteria
Bacteria are life.
What do you call a human on Mars, going to Mars, dreaming of Mars?
Is a machine alive?
When every machine and computer rusts
We’ll still be here!
If the Earth turned to rust
No more humans.
Can’t make humans from machines.
LA hipsters know all about machines.
Use them to ‘hack’ your body.
Watch out for cell towers
The illuminati hacking you
Our bodies are meat-suits
That our soul inhabits
Our beautiful natural bodies
Meat Suits!
What part of you is your soul?
What of us is and always will be our body?
Breathing, laughing, crying, blinking
Breathe.
Your feelings are the real you
What does the feeling?
No, your real physical body is immaterial
Better hack your meat suit
Be better looking
Live a lot longer
Your true identity … Martian
Such a spiritual experience.
What ever happened to seeing?
Rejecting our bodies
Rejecting our Earth
Put your meat suit
In a space suit
And fly to Mars
Where you belong.
But you are not an alien
You belong here
You deserve your body.
They
By Jeremiah Potter
They drug them
by their necks
away from the sacred
Fire
to the televisionThey murdered
the buffalo, deer
and bounty itself
to feed them Wonder Bread
and pork
They poisoned their
rivers, streams, lakes
and oceans
to force them to drink
swimming pool water and liquor
They beat them
with Bibles
and the cross
in fear of
the beauty of worshiping the earth
They stole all that
sustained them
to smudge out
their freedom
to tax them
on the land
that was loved and defended-
their land
that can never
be owned or divided
Sitting here by this smokey fire
under the winter dogwoods,
maples, birch and hemlocks,
in the vivid sun,
I divide myself.
As I always have.
Vowing to not be like
they-
colonist thieves, rapists and murderers
I vow not to
bury and squash
what has been,
and still is,
being done.
I vow,
to like them,
love the land and its
Inhabitants.
To turn my shoulder
to what they say
is right and wrong-
things so displaced
from actual honesty.
I vow to stand
against the utter
insanity of they-
in pure want of excess
and unchecked desecration.
Salmon
By Max Wilbert
Seen on a sign
at the Quileute reservation
“the salmon helped us for thousands of years
now it is time for us to help them”
Editors note: The Columbia River has been turned into a slave of civilization, forced to provide hydroelectricity, barge transport, and irrigation water to cities and big agribusiness. It is shackled in concrete and dying from dams, from overfishing, from toxins, from nuclear waste, from acoustic barrages and armored shorelines and logging and endless atrocities.
We at Deep Green Resistance do not believe that the federal government will accede to demands such as these. Furthermore, there are thousands of dams currently under construction or proposed worldwide. There are millions of dams in the “United States.” The salmon, the Orca whales—they have no time to waste. Everything is heading in the wrong direction. Therefore, we call for a militant resistance movement around the world to complement aboveground resistance movements and to dismantle industrial infrastructure.
Featured image: The Columbia River is constrained by Bonneville Dam, and bracketed by clearcuts, highways, and utility corridors. Public domain.
Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation
On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, October 14, 2019, the Yakama Nation and Lummi Nation hosted a press conference urging the removal of the lower Columbia River dams as part of a broader call for federal repudiation of the offensive doctrine of Christian discovery, which the United States uses to justify federal actions that impair the rights of Native Nations. The press conference took place this morning at Celilo Park near Celilo Village, Oregon.
“The false religious doctrine of Christian discovery was used by the United States to perpetuate crimes of genocide and forced displacement against Native Peoples. The Columbia River dams were built on this false legal foundation, and decimated the Yakama Nation’s fisheries, traditional foods, and cultural sites,” said Yakama Nation Tribal Council Chairman JoDe Goudy. “On behalf of the Yakama Nation and those things that cannot speak for themselves, I call on the United States to reject the doctrine of Christian discovery and immediately remove the Bonneville Dam, Dalles Dam, and John Day Dam.”
The doctrine of Christian discovery is the fiction that when Christian European monarchs obtained what was for them new knowledge of the Western Hemisphere, those monarchs had a religious right of domination over all non-Christian lands. This doctrine was propagated by the Roman Catholic Church through a series of papal bulls in the 15th century, including a papal bull authorizing Portugal to “invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans” and to place them into perpetual slavery and take their property. The Roman Catholic Church then implemented a framework where the right to subjugate the Americas was split between Spain and Portugal, although they were later joined by other European states. The doctrine was therefore one of domination and dehumanization of Native Peoples, and was used to perpetuate the most widespread genocide in human history.
In 1823, the United States Supreme Court used the doctrine of Christian discovery as the legal basis for the United States’ exercise of authority over Native lands and Peoples. See Johnson v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. 543 (1823). The Court found that the United States holds clear title to all Native lands subject only to the Native Nation’s right of occupancy, which the United States can terminate through purchase or conquest. In relying on the doctrine of Christian discovery, the Court described it as “the principle that discovery gave title to the government . . . against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession.” Id. at 573. The Court used this religious doctrine of domination and dehumanization to unilaterally deprive Native Nations of their sovereign rights, racially juxtaposing the rights of “Christian peoples” against those “heathens” and “fierce savages.” Id. at 577, 590.
In the years that followed, this false religious doctrine became the bedrock for what are now considered to be foundational principles of federal Indian law. In United States v. Kagama, 188 U.S. 375 (1886), and Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U.S. 553 (1903), the Court announced Congress’ extra-constitutional plenary power over all Indian affairs—the plenary power doctrine — which it justified by pointing to Native Nations’ loss of sovereign, diplomatic, economic, and property rights upon first ‘discovery’ by Europeans. In The Cherokee Tobacco, 78 U.S. 616 (1870), the Court applied the doctrine and held that Congress can unilaterally abrogate Treaty rights with subsequent legislation unless there is an express exemption provided in the Treaty—the last-in- time doctrine. In Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 435 U.S. 191 (1978), the Court deprived Native Nations of criminal jurisdiction over non-members based on the statement in M’Intosh that Native Nations’ rights “to complete sovereignty, as independent nations, were necessarily diminished” by European ‘discovery’ — the diminished tribal sovereignty doctrine. These legal doctrines have been weaponized against Native Nations ever since, including by Congress in authorizing construction of the Bonneville Dam, Dalles Dam, and John Day Dam without the Yakama Nation’s free, prior, and informed consent.
The history of the lower Columbia River dams can be traced back to 1792, when United States Merchant Robert Gray sailed up our N’chi’Wana (Columbia River) and claimed the territory for the United States. Mr. Gray entered our lands and performed a religious doctrine of discovery ceremony by raising an American flag and burying coins beneath the soil, thereby proclaiming dominion over our lands and our families without our knowledge or consent. Following the War of 1812, the United States and England falsely claimed joint authority over what became known as the Oregon Territory until 1846, when England relinquished its claim south of the 49th parallel. Having eliminated British opposition, Congress passed the Oregon Territorial Act of 1848 and the Washington Territorial Act of 1853. Both Territorial Acts reserve the United States’ claim to the sole right to treat with Native Nations, thereby maintaining the federal government’s doctrine of Christian discovery-based claims.
At the Walla Walla Treaty Council in May and June of 1855, the Yakama Nation’s ancestors met with United States representatives to negotiate the Treaty with the Yakamas of June 9, 1855. Article III, paragraph 2 of the Treaty reserves the Yakama Nation’s “right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed places . . .” including many places throughout the Columbia River basin. At no point during these negotiations did the United States express a claimed right of dominion over the Yakama Nation’s traditional lands that would allow the United States to unilaterally ignore the Treaty. Territorial Governor Isaac I. Stevens did not explain that the United States would dam the rivers and violate the Yakama Nation’s Treaty-reserved fishing rights without the Yakama Nation’s free, prior, and informed consent.
What followed was a 100-year conquest of the Columbia River by the United States. First, the United States Supreme Court paved the way by affirming federal regulatory authority over navigable waterways like the Columbia River in Gilman v. Philadelphia, 70 U.S. 713 (1866), and Congress’ extra-constitutional plenary authority over Indian affairs in United States v. Kagama, 188 U.S. 375 (1886). Congress then exercised this supposed authority by passing a series of legislative acts without the Yakama Nation’s consent, including Rivers and Harbors Acts, Right of Way Acts, the General Dams Act, the Federal Water Power Act, and the Bonneville Project Act, all of which facilitated construction of the lower Columbia River dams without regard for the Yakama Nation’s Treaty-reserved rights.
During the Depression, Congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act authorizing President Franklin D. Roosevelt to approve public works projects like the Bonneville Dam. Construction started in 1933, but President Roosevelt’s approval of the project was quickly deemed unconstitutional in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935). The authorization was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority from Congress to the President. It should have been deemed unconstitutional under the United States Constitution’s Supremacy Clause — which says the Treaty of 1855 is the “supreme law of the land” — because it was inconsistent with the rights reserved to the Yakama Nation by Treaty. Any argument to the contrary is an argument that Congress has plenary power over Indian affairs rooted in the false religious doctrine of Christian discovery.
Congress quickly re-approved the Bonneville Dam’s construction, which was completed in 1938. The Dalles Dam was built from 1952 to 1957, and the John Day Dam was built from 1968 to 1972. The Yakama Nation, as co-equal sovereign and signatory to the Treaty of 1855, never approved the construction of these dams. They inundated the villages, burial grounds, fishing places, and ceremonial sites that we used since time immemorial. Celilo Falls was the trading hub for Native Peoples throughout the northwest. The United States detonated it with explosives and drowned it with the Dalles Dam. After the Dalles Dam’s construction had already started, the United States negotiated an insignificant settlement with the Yakama Nation for the damage caused by the Dam. This was domination and coercion, not consent.
Today, the lower Columbia River dams stand as physical monuments to the domination and dehumanization that the United States continues to impose on Native Nations under the false religious doctrine of Christian discovery. “Columbus Day is a federal holiday celebrating the Christian-European invasion of our lands under the colonial doctrine of Christian discovery. Today, the Yakama Nation rejects that narrative by celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day and calling on the United States to remove the lower Columbia River dams that were built without our consent using the same false religious doctrine,” said Chairman Goudy.
For the eight different tribes of Ethiopia’s Omo valley region, the Gibe III dam and related sugar plantations project have already proved devastating. The dam has enabled local authorities to syphon off water from the Omo river to irrigate vast sugar plantations.
Forcibly evicted from their land, many of the country’s tribespeople have lost not only their homes but an entire way of life. The dam has ended the natural flood they depended on for flood retreat agriculture as well as depriving them of access to the river for fishing and for growing their crops.
Survival has received disturbing reports that tribal peoples are suffering from hunger and continue to suffer abuse and harassment if they speak out about the situation. Many communities are under pressure to relocate to government villages, a policy that most oppose.
The dam is also causing problems for the thousands of tribal peoples in northern Kenya who live around Lake Turkana and who fish its waters for their livelihood.
According to Ikal Ang’elei, director of the NGO Friends of Lake Turkana which has campaigned for years against the Gibe III dam: “The lives of local communities now hang in the balance given that their main sources of livelihood are facing extinction. This decision by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee should serve as a notice to Ethiopia to cancel any further dams planned on the Omo River.”
As early as 2010, one such expert predicted that the dam would reduce the lake’s inflow by some 50% and would cause the lake’s depth to drop to a mere 10 meters. “The result could be another Aral Sea disaster in the making,” he warned.
The World Heritage Centre Committee now recognises that the dam has led to “overall rapid decline in water levels” and has meant that seasonal fluctuations have been “heavily disrupted.” As a result, the Committee agrees that “the disruption of the natural flooding regime is likely to have a negative impact on the fish population in Lake Turkana, which may in turn affect the balance of the ecosystem, the livelihoods of the local fishing communities and the floodplains, which support herbivore species.”
UNESCO’s decision follows several years of lobbying by indigenous and international organizations.
The Omo Valley tribes did not give their free, prior and informed consent to the Gibe III dam project, a fact that Survival International highlighted in its submission to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
Despite the mounting evidence of the serious impacts of Gibe III on tribal peoples in Ethiopia and Kenya, the Ethiopian government is currently building another dam on the Omo river called Koysha, or Gibe 4.
The Tabasará River, one of the largest in Panama and the source of life for the indigenous Ngäbe-Buglé people, was emptied to carry out maintenance work on the Barro Blanco Hydroelectric Dam last week, leaving thousands and thousands of the more than 30 varieties of fish and crustaceans to perish in the mud.
Ricardo Miranda, general coordinator of the 10 de Abril Movement representing the affected communities, standing in the mud and rubble just upstream of the dam, picked up a half-meter-long catfish, holding it up for the camera.
“I would like to take the opportunity to denounce the Generadora del Istmo SA (GENISA), the owner of the Barro Blanco Project,” he told a local cameraman who uploaded it to YouTube. “I also denounce the FMO Bank of the Netherlands and the DEG Bank of Germany, for financing a project like this, which has caused irreversible damage to the environment.”
Initial reports of the death of fish and photos that were sent last week from the Ngäbe community of Kiad were initially singled out as false, Miranda said in a telephone interview on Thursday.The Ministry of the Environment of Panama, MiAmbiente, sent personnel to investigate the death of fish on Sunday, May 13. The agency confirmed in a press release that there had been a fish die-off and that the company had reported the need to lower the water level for maintenance work.
The inspectors of MiAmbiente see the devastation, apparently from the platform of the dam. (Ministry of the Environment)
Miranda, who grew up in the Tabasará River along with his family, now lives on the other side of the Ngäbe-Buglé district, but went to the river as soon as he heard the news. Upon arrival he found thousands of fish dying in the sun. Coyotes ate the dying fish and one person picked up some to carry. The river had been virtually emptied, leaving the riparian population exposed to a vast expanse of mud, according to Miranda, who observed only a few puddles of muddy water just above the dam.
MiAmbiente promised in its press release on Monday that “the surveillance of the site will be maintained in order to guarantee compliance with the regulations that apply to these events and that actions have been taken to guarantee the normal development of natural resources in the zone.”
Five Ngäbe-Buglé communities live along the river and have fought constantly against the dam since it was proposed for the first time. When the river flooded, it destroyed its food forest and the cocoa and coffee crops it depended on for sustenance. Thick mosquito clouds, previously unknown in the area, became common. Fishing became much more difficult, but it was still possible. Now, with the death of fish, they are left without a source of protein, said Miranda. In addition, the river, which also depend on water, is surrounded by 18 hectares of deep mud, and reaching the river to cross to the nearest town has become an almost impossible situation.
The residents of the Ngäbe community of Kiad observe the fish that die in the river in front of their homes. The access to the river has become a daily calvary for the community, which must cross it to leave their village. (Photo: Movement 10 April)
The government offered to pay the communities to relocate, but the Kiad community in particular has refused to accept – on the one hand for its principles, but on the other hand because the adjacent area and the community itself is a sacred site, which It houses several collections of prehistoric petroglyphs that have been the site of ceremonial meetings where the Ngäbe-Buglé people have traditionally connected with their ancestors.
“Obviously when you see this situation, you feel a very great impotence because all this is what we warned,” said Miranda, dismayed. “Then when we enter and see an ecological disaster at the mercy of the presence of the government and a company whose only interest is to profit, causing irreversible damage and death, both to animals and people, because here it is attempting against the feeding of the same inhabitants of the communities that live on this. ”
The Ngäbe leader, Weni Bagama, observes the damage to her community of Kiad and its surroundings by the floods caused by the Barro Blanco dam in February 2017. (Photo: Tracy L. Barnett)
The emptying of the river occurred in the final days of the public comment period for the draft report of the Environmental and Social Compliance Unit (SECU) established to monitor activities related to UNDP. The researchers concluded that UNDP violated its own protocols in the dialogue process that aimed to defuse the conflict surrounding the Barro Blanco dam. The projects (mainly a series of round tables held in 2015 and 2016 and a program to support reforms within the main government agency in charge of the Barro Blanco project) were financed at a cost of more than $ 66 million dollars.
The report was a response to the formal complaint filed on August 22, 2017 by the April 10 Movement, which represents the communities affected by the project. A final report will be issued when receiving and analyzing public comments.
Residents of the affected community of Kiad, one of the five indigenous communities of Ngäbe Buglé inundated by the dam, reviewed the report on their mobile phones from the muddy bank of their sacred Tabasará river. Since the floodgates were closed more than a year ago and destroyed the agricultural base of the community and many homes, residents have had great problems sustaining life.
“We have already read the report and, in general terms, we agree,” said one of the leaders of the April 10 Movement, Adelaida Miranda (Weni Bagama, by her name Ngäbe). “The report makes analysis completely on how the processes went, and investigated. That report is not only an office report but those people came to the area and did interviews, they saw the situation of the reservoir and then they issued that in the report. We are satisfied, of course this does not solve everything, but at least we agree where SECU admits that the United Nations did not fulfill the role it had to play. ”
The results of the draft SECU report included the following:
• The UNDP Country Office in Panama did not apply the required environmental and social assessment procedures to the projects in question.
• UNDP did not prepare a stakeholder analysis and participation plan before the roundtable, as required for UNDP commitments to Indigenous Peoples – commitments that present moderate (and probably significant) risks to communities.
• UNDP did not comply with the due diligence, transparency, consultation / consent and rights of indigenous peoples requirements after the Roundtable Dialogue concluded around June 2015. UNDP, for example, did not ensure consistency with the warnings and conclusions of the UN Special Rapporteur. including warnings that inadequate consultation and consent processes were the source of most of the problems related to the respect and protection of indigenous rights, and the necessary measures to guarantee respect for those rights.
Dr. Donaldo Sousa, president of the Association for Environmental Rights in Panama City, said that the draft report seems to validate the demand presented by his association in 2016, against all those involved in the Barro Blanco hydroelectric project, including the company, government and non-government officials such as UNDP, which was the first and only criminal complaint against a hydroelectric dam project in Panama to date.
“This report clearly demonstrates that this complaint that we introduced was well founded and this project should have been suspended as a precautionary measure because of the damage it was going to cause, and they did not do so. The problem was that he had the support of international organizations as important as UNDP, it is logical that there is an element that has been decisive in this case; but corruption and impunity that exists in this case has also been decisive. And the economic interests that have been put forward once more, destroying the environment and above all impacting in a violent way the communities that live there. ”
For Weni Bagama and her family, each day has become an odyssey, but they have no intention of giving up.
“We are still fighting,” said Bagama. “We ask the United Nations for an apology and we also ask the national authority to cancel that project, because right now we are walking around here seeing the disaster that has caused the emptying …. We have not waived the cancellation of that project. We are still fighting, because the fight is not over. ”
Ngäbe leader Weni Bagama (right) was among those arrested during protests at the Barro Blanco dam. (Photo: Oscar Sogandares)
