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dam-l The Battle Against Urra Dam of Rio Sinu, Colombia. (fwd)
Forwarded message:
From cwaterp@del3.vsnl.net.in Fri Dec 4 05:40:26 1998
Date: Fri, 04 Dec 1998 16:01:28 +0530
From: Himanshu Thakkar <cwaterp@del3.vsnl.net.in>
Reply-To: cwaterp@del3.vsnl.net.in
Organization: Centre For Water Policy
Subject: The Battle Against Urra Dam of Rio Sinu, Colombia.
THE BATTLE AGAINST URRA DAM OF RIO SINU, COLOMBIA
>
> After a decades long battle against various plans to dam the Sinu
> river, in northwestern Colombia, the powerless but courageous
> inhabitants of the upper catchment and of the lower valley finally
> learned that the country's highest constitutional court has ordered
> the dam construction company that they too should be taken into
> account in the project.
>
> Urra I dam is built already, and is awaiting court proceedings before
> its first filling. The judgement on the 10th November 1998 was based
> on a "tutela" presented by 3000+ strong Embera-Katio people who
> inhabit the upper reaches of the river. The court recognized that
> these indigenous people were put to grave risk by the dam and ordered
> the company, Multiproposito Urra S.A., to negotiate with them and
> reach an agreement on how to mitigate the impacts. The struggle up to
> this point has cost many lives, including those of an Embera leader
> last August and of a highly respected university professor, a vocal
> opponent of the project, a couple of years ago, both assassinated by
> unknown gunmen. The fight for survival in the lower valley by the
> poor farmers (campesinos) and fishermen, numbering over half a
> million, is much more bitter, as the zone is hotly contested by the
> paramilitary, drug barons and the guerrilla groups, and violent deaths
> are a common occurrence. A second court case, presented by a
> campesino coalition, ASPROCIG, is pending in the same constitutional
> court.
>
> Your help, in the form of international pressure and protest letters,
> are vital to make the Colombian government (who is behind the dam
> company) and the international donors sensitive to the claims of the
> defenseless indigenous and campesino people. There are several ways
> you could help.
>
> 1) Make yourself knowledgeable on the issue. The accompanying
> article, "Should Colombian Ethnic Groups ..." provides the background
> till June 1994. A summary of recent events is annexed below. The web
> site www.asprocig.org.co has a lot of information, but mainly in
> Spanish. An effort is made on making the site English "friendly". You
> can also write to asprocig@colnodo.apc.org for more information.
> 2) Write to the Colombian ambassador of your country protesting
> against the filling of Urra dam causing genocide of defenseless
> people. Also send protests to the international donors of the
> project. An effort is made to include a sample letter and the
> relevant addresses in the web site. In Colombia, the principal
> addresses are:
> -Dr Alfredo Solano Berrio, Presidente, Urrá S.A, Cr 3 No 68-70,
> Montería, Cordoba, Colombia, S.A. Fax 57-4-7 85 02 59
> -Dr Juan Mayr, Ministro del Medio Ambiente Cl 37 No. 8-40 Fax:
> 57-1-2889754, Santafé de Bogotá, email: webmaster@minambiente.gov.co
> -Dr Andrés Pastrana Arango, Presidente de la República, Casa de
> Nariño, Cra. 8ª No. 7 -26, Santafé de Bogotá, Fax: 57-1-2867434 email:
> webmaster@presidencia.gov.co
>
> 3) Whatever resources you can allocate to publicize the struggle,
> space in web sites, newsletters, speaking tours, etc..., are greatly
> appreciated.
>
>
> Chronology of the project and the struggle:
> 1.
> Resolution 706, August 1991, of INDERENA (In charge of environment at
> that time), Establishes terms of reference for the construction of the
> project.
> 2.
> February 1993, INDERENA & CORELCA (Corporación Eléctrica de la Costa
> Atlántica) agree on issuing the license in two stages: Construction &
> operation.
> 3.
> Resolution 243, April 1993, INDERENA issues the environmental license
> for building the dam.
> 4.
> December 1993, Ministerio del Medio Ambiente (Environment) (Law 99) is
> formed and it begins monitoring the project.
> 5.
> November 1994, Embera-katio people of upper Sinu, with the help of
> ONIC (Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia) launch "Do Wabura"
> protest, a 7-day river raft march, against the dam project. The
> government agrees to fund ONIC to study the impacts.
> 6.
> 3rd March 1995, with the help of Defensoría del Pueblo a public
> environmental audience is convened.
> 7.
> December 1995: Min. Medio Ambiente authorizes the diversion of río
> Sinú for building the dam. (The diversion, though did not reduce the
> river flow, affected severely the migrating fish population)
> 8.
> September 1997: URRA S.A. solicits license modification to fill and
> operate the dam.
> 9.
> Auto 828, November 1997. Min. Medio Ambiente solicits information from
> URRA S.A.
> 10.
> Modification 828, March 1998: Min. Medio Ambiente orders prior
> consultations with Emberá people.
> 11.
> Auto 327, Mayo 1998: Min. Medio Ambiente orders consultations with
> Zenú indigenous people and a public audience.
> 12.
> June 1998, Public Audience
> 13.
> June 1998, Begin consultations with communities of Emberá & Zenú.
> 14.
> July 1998, the Constitutional court orders the suspension of filling
> the dam before hearing the arguments of the case presented by Emberá
> people.
> 15.
> 10th Nov. 1998, a large gathering of fishermen of Sinú river march in
> Bogotá with their now useless fishnets and canoes.
> 16.
> 10th Nov. 1998, the Constitutional court orders URRA S.A. to negotiate
> with Embera people on mitigating the impacts before filling the dam.
>
>
> The shareholders of URRA S.A.
> · Ministry of Mining and Energy
> · CORELCA (recently privatized).
> · Interconexión Eléctrica S.A., ISA.
> · The provincial governments of Atlantic coast.
> · The Municipality of Tierralta.
> · private sector
>
> Who finances the project?
>
> Agent Support (US$ Mill.)
> Finance Ministry 130.2
> Provincial governments 130.2
> Energomachexport (Russia) 75.6
> CAF (Multilateral Andean Bank) 55.0
> Local banks 52.2
> Nordisk Investment Bank (NIB) 73.2
> Canadian Agency for
> Export Development 129.9
> Total 646.3
>
> SHOULD COLOMBIAN ETHNIC GROUPS SACRIFICE THEIR LIFESTYLES
> FOR "MAJORITY BENEFIT"?
>
> Prepared by:
>
> Kashyapa A. S. Yapa, Ph.D. in Civil Eng. (Berkeley)
> June 1994, Bogotá, Colombia.
>
> Centuries of harmonious existence with nature by the Embera-Katio
> people, an indigenous group of Colombia, is now under serious threat:
> the waters of river Sinu, their lifeblood, is scheduled to be diverted
> by early 1995, through the tunnels now in progress, to make way for
> the Urra I dam.
>
> Over the last two decades, these people lived under the more menacing
> threat of Urra I & II dams, which would have inundated almost totally
> their territory, located in Cordoba, a northwestern province of
> Colombia, along with a large part of the extremely diverse virgin
> forest. They were very relieved when those plans were scrapped in the
> late 1980s, because the Colombian government could not find the
> financial backing for that highly controversial project. However, the
> power crisis in Colombia in 1992 gave the needed maneuvering space for
> the proponents of the project. A Swedish-Colombian joint venture
> began preparing the diversion works in July 1993 for the Urra I dam, a
> smaller dam located downstream of where Urra II was to be built.
> Although Urra I reservoir will inundate only a relatively small
> portion of their land, the Embera-Katio people of Alto Sinu are
> fighting hard against it, because it seriously affects their
> traditional way of living. Especially under threat are, their staple
> proteins diet (the migratory fish species), the only means of
> transportation they possess (the river), and the caretaker/provider of
> them all, the virgin forest.
>
> The project
> The Urra I project, scheduled to be completed in about 5 years,
> consists of a 74m high, 1300m long earth dam across the River Sinu at
> Fresquillo, in the municipality of Tierralta. Four 6.5m diameter and
> 142m long tunnels will carry water to four turbines that have a total
> power generating capacity of 340MW. The catchment area above the dam,
> which includes the territory of Embera-Katio people and a good part of
> the Paramillo National Park, is about 4600 sq. km., with an annual
> average rainfall exceeding 2000mm.
>
> The owner of the dam, Corporación Eléctrica de Costa Atlántica
> (CORELCA), has launched a company, Empresa Multipropósito Urra I S.A.,
> to execute and manage the project. The Skanska-Conciviles joint
> venture has been awarded the civil works and a Russian group,
> Energomachexport, is in charge of the electromechanical works of the
> project. A local entity, Gomez, Cajiao y asociados CIA ltda, acts as
> the consultants.
>
> In addition to the hydropower generated, the project is supposed to:
> 1) drain and "recover" 10,000 hectares (ha) from the Lorica swamp
> (cienaga) downstream, 2) drain additional 16,000 ha, 3) irrigate
> 150,000 ha of new land and 4) provide flood control. The construction
> works supposedly will provide 3,500 jobs for the local labor market.
>
> These heavily publicized benefits themselves are disputable. An
> independent study (Alzate et al, 1987), done on the eve of the
> unsuccessful attempt to build Urra II, argues that the river catchment
> area cannot provide that much water: only two turbines will be
> operable on regular basis. The study also highly disputes the figure
> given as "the area of recoverable land", citing that the poor soil and
> lack of infrastructure in the said area will require a massive amount
> of additional expenditure, not budgeted within the project, for a
> proper recovery and use.
>
> The total cost of Urra I, estimated in 1990 to be in the range of US$
> 650 million, is shared jointly through local and international
> financial resources. The loans or aid portion, 60% of the cost, is put
> up by Corporación Andina de Fomento, Nordic Investment Bank, Export
> Development Corporation of Canada and the Russian Government, under
> the backing of the World Bank, and a group of local banks, each
> contributing nearly equally. The owner, local private enterprises and
> local municipalities are contributing the rest in the form of
> investment.
>
> The impacts
> The socioeconomic and environmental costs reflected in the budget are
> minimal. The area inundated by the reservoir is only sparsely
> populated. That includes about 400 families of non-indigenous recent
> immigrants (colonos) and 11 Embera families. Hardly any of these
> families have legal title to the land where they live and cultivate.
> So the compensation and relocation costs, at least from the owner's
> viewpoint, are very small. The mitigation of the project's impact on
> the communities that live above and below the reservoir, and on the
> environment, have been limited, so far, to a number of studies and
> reports produced, and none of the studies seemed to have changed any
> of the original plans.
>
> However, the costs and the problems due to the project will be immense
> from the viewpoint of the indigenous people and the independent
> observers. The main complaint of the indigenous community is that
> they were never consulted as to how much they are willing to sacrifice
> for the sake of so-called "majority benefit". Contacts with the owner
> have been limited to some meetings, which simply informed them of the
> building of the dam.
>
> The Embera-Katio people of Alto Sinu, now numbering over 1200, are
> already under severe threat, many a time mortal, from the colonos, who
> invade the indigenous lands for valuable timber and/or for more
> pasture or agricultural land. The pressure from immigrants has
> increased over the last 30 years, especially with the arrival of
> access roads. The colonos often falsely accuse the indigenous
> community of being collaborators of the guerilla bands, prompting
> severe harassment by the military forces. Recently, the wealthier
> landowners have begun to employ well-armed paramilitary groups to
> frighten and subdue the indigenous community. The Emberas fear a new
> and greater wave of invasion of their land with the commencement of
> the project.
>
> Even the CORELCA as well as the Government have recognized the extreme
> damage to the virgin forest, already caused by the colonos and the
> possibility of such pressure increasing. The only suggestion offered,
> so far, is to create a reserve in the already cleared area and a
> buffer zone, managed eventually by the Emberas. However, the
> indigenous people worry that without the legal title to hold land as a
> collective right, other actions will have little effect. As a good
> example of what is to come, they cite the plight of their brethren in
> the Bayano Lake region of the neighboring Panama. There, after the dam
> was built in the 1970s, invasions by the colonos not only stripped the
> land of its trees, but also contaminated the water resources with
> agro-chemicals.
>
> The threat to the Emberas' main supply of protein is no less severe.
> As the lack of forest cover reduced the availability of game animals,
> Bocachico and other migratory fish species have formed a very
> important part of their daily diet. The fish thrive in the fast
> flowing shallow waters of upper Sinu. The dam will definitely impede
> their passage upstream. Now the owner's engineers are talking about
> providing a fish ladder, which is the typical escape goat, but has
> been proved fatally inadequate elsewhere.
>
> The extreme undulating terrain in the upper reaches has forced the
> Embera people to use the river as their only mode of transportation to
> the outside world. The river diversion, soon to go into effect, will
> halt navigation in the river. When the reservoir is impounded, in
> such deep stagnant waters, their balsa rafts will again be useless,
> forcing them to adopt more expensive motorized boats.
>
> The Zenu, another indigenous group, who base their livelihood on the
> natural resources in Lorica and Momil swamps, downstream of the dam,
> also fear deeply a total disruption of their lifestyle. The draining
> of the swamps, suggested as a "benefit" of the project, will be to the
> detriment of the Zenu, who rely on fishing and agriculture in
> seasonally inundated swamp lands. The owner of the dam maintains that
> there will not be any negative impacts downstream. However, the lack
> of any major branches that join the river below the dam where the fish
> can go up to reproduce, sheds a very dark cloud on the future of the
> migratory fish species, and hence, on the large downstream population
> that depends on them. Alzate et al (1987) claim also that the reduced
> water flow in the river, during the reservoir filling, will cause
> drying of a large part of the Lorica swamp. Moreover, the absence of
> frequent flooding that enrich the soil, will force the indigenous as
> well as the non-indigenous farmers in the area, to adopt a system of
> irrigated and fertilized agriculture, for which they have no training,
> the infrastructure nor the financial capacity.
>
> With regard to the ecological impact, Alzate et al (1987) warn of the
> possibility of high aquatic weed growth in the reservoir and its high
> clearing costs, which were experienced in similar settings. Also,
> decomposition of the large biomass that exist in such humid tropics
> could produce hazardous quantities of Hydrogen Sulfide and cause
> de-oxygenating of water, with severe repercussions on the populations
> around and downstream of the reservoir and on the project owner's
> future plans for aquaculture.
>
> The political atmosphere
> The irony of the situation is that the ink of the new 1991
> constitution of Colombia, which includes clauses protecting the
> traditional lifestyles of indigenous communities and their right to
> hold land collectively, has barely dried when the Urra I project got a
> new life.
>
> The owner had obtained an environmental permit to go ahead with the
> project in 1993, though the company itself admits that it has not yet
> completed the studies on the impact on the indigenous peoples, not to
> mention any work on remedial measures.
>
> In recent meetings between the representatives of the indigenous
> community (including ONIC, Organización Nacional Indígena de
> Colombia), the Government authorities and the owner, the indigenous
> have exposed the unpreparedness of the owner to undertake any remedial
> measures. The anthropologists of the owner are suggesting
> "ethnoeducation" as a remedy, but for indigenous people that means the
> same as assimilation.
>
> The atmosphere surrounding the project is contaminated with drug
> money, dirty politics and political violence, operating entwined in
> the region. The local investors of the project and the large
> landowners downstream, who will benefit the most from the project, are
> all linked to the few influential families who control the regional
> politics. The drug money, which has infiltrated every aspect of the
> Colombian society, is now being converted into a large land belt along
> the Caribbean coast, and has raised stakes in the struggle for land
> between the Zenu indigenous group and invaders. The political
> violence, linked to all this, has claimed, in the first four months of
> 1994 alone, lives of seven Zenu leaders, including a current secretary
> of ONIC, which seriously debilitated their organizing against Urra I
> dam project.
>
> Light at the end of the tunnel?
> However, there are reasons to be optimistic about the turn of the
> events, even at this late stage, when almost all funding has been
> approved and the civil works are in progress. A large sum of money
> provided by the Nordic Investment Bank is still subjected to
> monitoring by a special commission. On the other hand, the criticism
> on the project is sharp, in an internal memorandum prepared by the
> special envoy for the Director General of Indigenous Affairs, a
> division of the Government Affairs Ministry of Colombia, after
> attending a late April 1994 informational meeting the owner held with
> the Emberas. The memorandum suggests, among other actions, a revision
> of the environmental permit issued for the project, with a view of
> suspending the civil works, until satisfactory agreements on
> mitigation of negative impacts on social and cultural life of the
> affected indigenous groups are reached. A couple of recent successful
> battles, fought under the umbrella of the new constitution, against
> the Government manipulation of traditional lands held collectively by
> ethnic groups, also have strengthened the hands of these eternal
> victims of "development".
>
> (Note: This was prepared in June 1994, before the protest river
> march, "Do Wabura" by Emberas in November 1994, and before my direct
> involvement in organizing that protest. The article in Spanish,
> "Construir Urra I es insistir en caos", was prepared later with more
> technical analysis and with special help on social aspects. -author)
>
> References:
>
> Alzate, A. et al (1987) "Impactos sociales del proyecto hidroelectrico
> de Urra", Fundación del Caribe, Monteria, Cordoba, Colombia.
>
> ************************
>
> Prehispanic experience in flood control in Sinu valley
>
> River Sinú forms a part of the huge 5000 km2 wide Momposina Depresion,
> that also incorporate lower reaches of Magdalena, Cauca and San Jorge
> rivers. Greater part of this fertile but frequently flooded marshy
> land had been artificially modified, over the last 2000 years, with up
> to 4 km long, 10-20m wide, well planned system of canals and
> intermittent elevated (ridge) platforms. The canals are arranged in
> various patterns, fish bone, checker board, etc, depending on the
> local morphology and topography, to help drain excess water, carry
> flood waters to lagoons or to help navigation. These canals helped
> disperse the flood waters, trapped river sediments (keeping the river
> clean and clear) which later serve as fertilizer for platform fields,
> permitted navigation, served as fishing fields, and in dry season,
> were also useful for irrigation. The ridged fields were very
> productive agricultural lands and also served as safe living grounds.
> This complex hydraulic management system is repeated in different
> forms in many low lands of the American continent, in the lower Guayas
> river basin of Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname, French Guyana, Venezuela,
> Bolivian Amazon, southeastern Mexico, Belize and also in the southern
> states of USA. Those who are interested in learning more about such
> experiences can refer to the web site of Bolivian Amazon research at
> www.sas.upenn.edu/~cerickso/applied.html (site of Clark Erickson).
>
> The sad part of the story is that none of the modern flood control
> projects in any of the above regions has provided a satisfactory
> solution to the problem, nor does take note of the value of the
> ancient system.
>
>
>
>