Author: earthfirst

Octo­ber 21st, 2014

Regard­less of the dam’s pro­gres­sion, Chong inhab­i­tants con­tin­ue to express their dis­con­tent.

The deten­tion and release of 11 envi­ron­men­tal activists in Cambodia’s Areng Val­ley in mid-Sep­tem­ber end­ed the last major protests of the con­tro­ver­sial Stung Cheay Areng hydro dam project.

Activists had been detain­ing and block­ing con­voys of vehi­cles into the val­ley since March of this year, but their makeshift road­block has since been com­man­deered by the country’s Roy­al Cam­bo­di­an Armed Forces.

The valley’s native Chong inhab­i­tants have watched the dam project grow with a mix­ture of fear and bit­ter­ness. The Chong have dwelt along the Areng for over 600 years but soon, if the dam is com­plet­ed, it will flood at least 26,000 acres of land. Moth­er Jones writes that the esti­mates range between 40 and 77 square miles.

This will dis­place more than 1,500 peo­ple, and is already invit­ing the rape of the Cen­tral Car­damom Pro­tect­ed For­est. To begin the dam project, new roads had to be built to trans­port equip­ment back and forth, pro­vid­ing free access to unscrupu­lous tim­ber com­pa­nies. At least 20,000 cubic yards of rose­wood (worth an esti­mat­ed $220 mil­lion in tim­ber) have been ille­gal­ly logged since the dam project began.

The dam itself is being con­struct­ed by Sino­hy­dro Resources, China’s largest dam-build­ing con­trac­tor and its third firm to take on the task. Ini­tial­ly, Chi­na South­ern Pow­er Grid was to build the dam, but relin­quished its con­tract with the Cam­bo­di­an gov­ern­ment in 2010 on pur­port­ed­ly “moral” grounds.

A report from the Japan­ese Inter­na­tion­al Coop­er­a­tion Agency on the project lat­er point­ed out that the dam would only gen­er­ate an out­put of 108 megawatts – too lit­tle for so high a mon­e­tary and envi­ron­men­tal cost.

Chi­na Guo­di­an Cor­po­ra­tion was the next firm to take up the project, but pulled out in 2013. They, too, found the dam to be eco­nom­i­cal­ly unvi­able.

Though the dam would be hypo­thet­i­cal­ly capa­ble of gen­er­at­ing enough pow­er for 87,000 homes, Inter­na­tion­al Rivers argues that “the dam will only oper­ate at 46 per­cent capac­i­ty dur­ing the dry sea­son, pre­cise­ly when Cam­bo­dia most needs the elec­tric­i­ty.”

In addi­tion to this low ener­gy out­put, the dam is pro­ject­ed to be more of a bur­den to Cam­bo­dia than a bless­ing – even with­out tak­ing the valley’s 31 endan­gered ani­mals into account. Areng is just one of 17 dams the coun­try wants to build over the next two decades, but most of their pow­er will be export­ed to neigh­bor­ing coun­tries. What’s worse, Sino­hy­dro will own the dam for the next 40 years before turn­ing it over to the Cam­bo­di­an gov­ern­ment, at which time the dam’s main­te­nance costs and envi­ron­men­tal impacts will poten­tial­ly make it worth­less to the coun­try.

Despite all this, Cambodia’s Min­is­ter of Mines and Ener­gy and Min­is­ter of Envi­ron­ment have both stat­ed that the Areng dam is on sched­ule for com­ple­tion by 2020.

But that hasn’t stopped natives from protest­ing.

“Even if they piled mon­ey one meter above my head, I don’t want their Chi­nese mon­ey,” one vil­lager told Moth­er Jones’ Kalya­nee Mam. “I want to stay in my vil­lage. Even with all this mon­ey, I could only spend it in this life. I wouldn’t be able to pass it on to my grand­chil­dren. I just want my vil­lage and my land for the future of my grand­chil­dren.”

by Plan­et Experts

Octo­ber 17th, 2014

Pro­test­ers have forced employ­ees of Man­i­to­ba Hydro out of the Jen­peg gen­er­at­ing sta­tion in north­ern Man­i­to­ba.

The pro­test­ers, from Pimi­cika­mak Cree Nation, deliv­ered an over­sized evict­ed notice on Fri­day to staff at the sta­tion and the employ­ee hous­ing com­plex, both of which are locat­ed on the Nel­son Riv­er in Pimi­cika­mak ter­ri­to­ry.

“The build­ing is emp­ty, locked, undam­aged and under the Pimi­cika­mak flag,” states a release from the Cree Nation, which is locat­ed approx­i­mate­ly 525 kilo­me­tres by air north of Win­nipeg.

A few hydro per­son­nel remain inside the dam itself to mon­i­tor the facil­i­ty. Pimi­cika­mak guar­an­tees the safe­ty and well-being of these peo­ple, and ensures that hydro facil­i­ties will not be dam­aged.”

The pro­test­ers want com­pen­sa­tion for dam­ages caused by flood­ing from the dam, which opened in 1979.

“The hydro sys­tem floods 65 square kilo­me­tres of Pimi­cika­mak land and caus­es severe dam­age to thou­sands of kilo­me­tres of shore­line,” Chief Cathy Mer­rick stat­ed in the press release. “Out­ly­ing grave sites have been washed away; Pimi­cika­mak peo­ple have died as a result of semi-sub­merged debris from erod­ing shore­lines and unsafe ice con­di­tions caused by hydro.

“The project has turned a once boun­ti­ful and inti­mate­ly known home­land into a dan­ger­ous and despoiled pow­er cor­ri­dor.”

Jen­peg, which Man­i­to­ba Hydro uses to con­trol out­flows from Lake Win­nipeg into the Nel­son Riv­er sys­tem, is locat­ed about 20 kilo­me­tres from Cross Lake, which is the main Pimi­cika­mak set­tle­ment with some 8,000 res­i­dents.

“This is our home; we will not let it be tram­pled,” said Mer­rick. “This dam has been great for the south but for us it is a man-made cat­a­stro­phe. Hydro needs to clean up the mess it has cre­at­ed in our home­land. Hydro needs to treat us fair­ly.”

She said the provin­cial gov­ern­ment has spo­ken about rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with all hydro-affect­ed peo­ples, and a “new era” of “part­ner­ship” but so far none of that has hap­pened.

The hydro sys­tem pro­duces $3.8 mil­lion worth of pow­er on its five Nel­son Riv­er dams every day, accord­ing to Mer­rick, who not­ed it “has not con­tributed to ‘the erad­i­ca­tion of mass pover­ty and mass unem­ploy­ment’ as was con­tem­plat­ed in the 1977 North­ern Flood Agree­ment.

“The NFA says affect­ed peo­ple will be dealt with fair­ly and equi­tably,” she said, adding, “In many parts of Cana­da, gov­ern­ments and com­pa­nies are real­iz­ing that every­one ben­e­fits when the tremen­dous wealth and oppor­tu­ni­ty of the land is shared fair­ly.”

Pimicikamak’s road map to pos­i­tive change includes:

• A pub­lic apol­o­gy from Pre­mier Greg Selinger for past and present harms suffered​ by all hydro-affect­ed peo­ples and their lands.
• A com­mit­ment from Man­i­to­ba and Man­i­to­ba Hydro to engage in a good-faith process to ful­fill promis­es in the NFA, includ­ing mea­sures relat­ed to com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment, envi­ron­men­tal mit­i­ga­tion and max­i­mum employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties.
• A rev­enue shar­ing agree­ment and/or water rental arrange­ment with Pimi­cika­mak.

“​The Pimi­cika­mak peo­ple will not leave Jen­peg until Man­i­to­ba and Hydro make sub­stan­tive com­mit­ments to fol­low the course out­lined above,” Mer­rick said.

The chief and coun­cil will be meet­ing with provin­cial and hydro offi­cials at the Jen­peg sta­tion on Fri­day.