Lunes 7 de sep/98  pág  1-D
In danger 7.400 hs from the Nudo de Paramillo Park
Caos in Urra cmes to the forest
The work has already finished with the bocachico fish, from which native and fishmen people feed and lived, and now it will affect this reserve. The hydroelectric construstion is forbidden in some countries due to the irreversible damage caused to natural and community ecosystems.
460.000 hs of primary and secondary rain forests began to be seriously affected with the Urra Hydroelectric Construction, at the Nudo de Paramillo natural park, situated between Córdoba and Antioquía Colombian states. From this forest, 7.400 hs will be constructed directly with the fillieng from the hydroelectric artificial lake, from which the 90% wil dissapear forever from the Planet without having studied it.

This forest wealth is represented in a big biodiversity and original, that is, exclusive species from the area. There, it is born the rivers: Verde, Esmeralda, manso, Tigre, Caimán, San Jorge, Sinú and more than 500 small lakes, therefore, the UICN (International Union for the Nature Conservation) considers it among the 10 natural parks with the most world ecological richoess.

This natural forest destruction will be an irreversible lost for the mankind so that, according to Ante H. Ehrilich and Paul R. "an only tree in a rain forest produces 7.6 millions of water liters, during its life". If this is multiplied by the number of trees that the Nudo de Paramillo has, the contribution that this makes to the environmment is incalculable. Besides, its destruction will help to the Planet climatic change, bydecreasing the evapotranspiration process in the area, what will reproduce the precipitation level, that, according Max Henríquez meteorologist, is about 5.600 mm at the Paramillo higher part.
Sinú damage
Sinú river, with 370 Kms of lenght, is the only in Colombia and as few in the World, that joins to four from the most important world biomas: Páramo, Rain Forest, tropical and Estuaries.
It provides the 90% from the richness that the Caribbean Sea has, represented in the planctum, zooplanctum and in the millions of microorganisms with which has irrigated the Sinú Valley, becoming it the most world fertile.
This richness will be forever lost with the Urra Hydroelectric since this, by leveling its waters, will hamper that the river returns to provide it the same water volume to the Ciénaga Grande de Lorica, in the Sinú lowest, wich will be slowly drying. By not irrigating the Sinú its valley, this will bellow the freatic level and its lands will be turned salty, such as it happened with the Nilo River valley with the construction from the Aswan Hydroelectric, in Egypt.
Good Bye to the Bocachico fish
The Urra Hydroelectric will not only affect the totality from the Nudo de Paramillo but is has already finished with the bocachico and other species from which, 3 thousand katios Embera native people from the Karagabí and Iwagadó Reservations, and more than 10 thousand fishmen families and Zenúes that live in the lower deep valley from the Sinú River, because the Hydroelectric hampers that the bocachico can raise again to reproduce itself of its life.

The bocachico fish dissapearing had been advised a lot of times by ecologist and environmrnt people earlier than the hydroelectric was built. However, the political interests from insensible governments and the multinational financed by Sweden and Canadá were more powerful than the starvation and the communities culture that for centuries have kept a real development sustainable for this and the future generations.

Another sociological impact that will produce the hydroelectric is the dissapearing from the Sinú River beaches because this already has not the sufficiente force for dragging the rocky material from the Nudo de Paramillo highest, which by being divided, it becomes in stones, gravel and sand. Besides, because the river will keep the stable caudal, what will not allow that the beaches to appear once again along the Sinú low valley, from which some 8.000 sand people lived, who with their work allowed that the construction materials in Córdoba State were cheaper.
Project feasibility.
Urra will only produce 340 mg from energy, what is little in face to the damage that it will produce. It is a megaproject that was built without a serious and deep study of environment impact.
Urra directive board assure that this hydroelectric life average is from 50 years, when in fact, the helpful life is from some 20 years by the highg sedimentation and the biomasa to separate into.
Also, it has not environment license of filling and operation from the Environment Ministry.
In the world, this obsolete way of producing energy is questionned by the irreversible damage that this makes to natural systems and communities. But in the Third World Countries, more megaprojects remains being built, financed mostly by the World Bank and the Urra case, by the Nordie International Bank from Norway.
 

SHOULD COLOMBIAN ETHNIC GROUPS SACRIFICE THEIR LIFESTYLES
FOR "MAJORITY BENEFIT"?

Prepared by:

Kashyapa A. S. Yapa
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, and before my direct involvement in organizing the protest.  The article, "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

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