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Dam opponents release Rio Teta environmental study

Opponents release results of San Carlos dam impact study
by Eric Jackson

Under the Panamanian system, the usual procedure with large construction projects is that the promoter of a project hires someone to do an environmental impact study and submits it to the National Environmental Authority (ANAM). Then there is a public hearing and ANAM decides whether or not to accept the study and grant a permit for the project. However, when the Pérez Balladares administration privatized the state-owned electric company, he exempted most small hydroelectric generation plants from those procedures, leaving it to the Public Services Regulating Board (Ente Regulador) to weigh the environmental impact of dams.

Panama means "abundance of fish" and counts on fishing as one of its important export industries and the way of life for many thousands of families who derive there sustenance from the sea. We have lots of rivers, but only a few large ones. The fish and shrimp that these people catch often need these rivers to reproduce, and the nutrients that rivers deliver to the sea are the supporting base for the entire marine food chain. The nations' fisheries are regulated by the Panama Maritime Authority (AMP), but if all of the rivers in Panama were dammed it would be a mortal blow to the fishing industry big and small but under our current laws the AMP would have nothing to say about it.

Tourism has overtaken fishing as a source of jobs and income in Panama, and theoretically ANAM is charged with protecting those natural assets which attract tourists, both from abroad and from within Panama. However, our sports fishery and tourist attractions that depend on rivers to be dammed in many cases have fallen partially or entirely outside of ANAM's jurisdiction.

These anomalies have created good faith gaps in Panama's environmental protection system, and also opportunities for obnoxious behavior undertaken by those who would evade ANAM's oversight by mislabeling, for example, a project designed to create a lake for a real estate development or an attempted private appropriation of scarce water resources in one of the dryer parts of the country by mislabeling it as a small hydroelectric dam.

That's essentially what has happened in San Carlos, where a dam on the Rio Teta is about 80 percent done and another one is projected on the Rio Mata Ahogado. The company that's building the project claims that it's a small hydroelectric dam, but a cursory glance at the purported electricity generating system indicates that the developers are not serious about that purpose. There is, however, a pipe coming from the Rio Teta dam designed to carry water somewhere else, a duct that, unlike the one purportedly to take water to a generator, is built to serve its purpose.

Because it claimed to be a hydroelectric project, the promoters of the project on the Teta and Mata Ahogado rivers, Hidroelectrica San Carlos SA, never went to ANAM for a permit. Instead, they took such environmental documents as they made to the Ente Regulador, which at the time was notoriously a tool of the industries it purports to regulate. (It may or may not be that flagrantly bad now, since the Torrijos administration's recent changes that took away most of its judicial function, gave ANAM a say in certain matters from which it was excluded and changed the lineup of people in charge.) Thus there was no environmental impact study worthy of the name on file with ANAM, nor was there anything ANAM would recognize as such at the Ente Regulador. No hearings were held on the environmental impact.

But at the mouth of the Rio Teta is "Tits Point," an important spot on the national surfing scene due to the wave break created by a sandbar fed by the river. Moreover, the little estuary at the river's mouth is an important spawning area for white shrimp, which are economically important to the local artesanal fishing industry. Neither the former tourism asset nor the latter fisheries asset were mentioned in any of the company's filings with the Ente Regulador.

An alarm was sounded in the first instance by surfers, and picked up by a number of local residents. Some people who owned property along the Rio Teta didn't like the idea of the waterway going dry because of the dam, and those who lived near the site viewed gullies that washed mud onto fish spawning areas and called the physical integrity of the dam into question with great concern. Others in the town of San Carlos noted that the Rio Mata Ahogado is the source of the municipal water supply and began to worry about the private appropriation of that.

However, city hall is divided about the matter, with some representantes critical of the project, the mayor and city attorney supportive and most of the city council sitting on the fence. Complicating matters is the city's small but important part of the jurisdiction over this project: the city inspectors' role. The safety of a structure is a matter for municipal inspectors, but in general building inspection in Panama is not very good and in San Carlos the city government lacks the skilled people to properly inspect a dam project.

And the project was not, in fact, inspected by the city or anyone else in government until the Rio Teta dam was mostly built. By that time it had become clear to anyone who cared to look that the project was not being built to the dimensions and in the location specified in the plan approved by the Ente Regulador.

That variation, plus the gullies in the earthen dam, the sedimentation of the river and some small fuel spills on the work site, prompted ANAM to step in and issue a "stop work" order while the project was reviewed. The action led to a lull in the political battle over the project.

But meanwhile, dam opponents assembled a group of researchers, including Dr. Janzel Villalaz, Dr. Juan A. Gómez, Jorge Mendieta, Jacobo Araúz, Carlos Vega and Juan B. Del Rosario, to do field studies along the Rio Teta and to review the data on file with government offices and the environmental literature about the area. They concentrated their work on the fauna and flora along the river and the physical, chemical and biological facts of the river itself.

They found a 27-kilometer river originating on Cerro Valle Chiquito, a geologically young watercourse that washes volcanic sand from an ancient eruption that left the crater that's now El Valle into the Gulf of Panama. From the promoter's papers on file, they noted estimates of 351 tons of sand and 2565 tons of other sediments washing into the sea every year along the Rio Teta.

Along a five-kilometer stretch of the river, in the water and extending 20 meters from either bank, 80 species of plants were identified. Among these was a small shade-loving ground cover plant, Marchantia s., which is rather rare and had only been found at higher and cooler altitudes before; and Maratrum sp., a water plant that's important to the aquatic food chain. There were 47 species of birds, 38 endemic and nine migratory, observed. No large mammals were found, but there were nutria, squirrels, ñequis, nine-banded armadillos and a variety of bats identified. The important contribution of the sand and sediment carried by the river to the beaches of San Carlos was noted. The river's temperature was taken and found to be about 5ºC cooler than that of the sea, a difference that was attributed to the rapid flow of water from the hills and pointed out as critical to the survival of many organisms in the river. The presence of white shrimp (Penaeus sp.) larvae in the river was noted, as were the economic importance of these crustaceans to Panama and the river flow's physical importance to these larvae.

The study concluded that the dam would erode the river's banks, harm the wildlife along the river and in its estuary, and lead to the salinization of land and groundwater along the Rio Teta.

The study has been presented to the San Carlos city council, and is likely to play a role in anticipated litigation to stop the dam's completion.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Panama...

San Carlos is but one of many communities around Panama wrestling with the pros and cons of a dam project.

Because it's home to the weekend cottages of a lot of well educated, well connected and reasonably affluent people who spend most of their time living and working in the Panama City metro area, the emerging battle over the Rio Teta - Rio Mata Ahogado dam project is different than most. In most other places facing the prospect of environmental change caused by dams, the locals who are concerned lack the resources that have been brought to bear in San Carlos. In most of the rural Interior, those who have the knowledge to study environmental impact issues and mount campaigns based upon them are principally found among the clergy and in the teaching profession. Because they depend on the government for their income, many teachers who might be able to help hesitate to do so openly. Thus it should be no huge surprise that opposition to some dam projects in the Interior is largely headquartered in Catholic organizations, particularly in the CARITAS social missionary organization

Between April 19 and 24, some 200 activists met along the banks of the Rio Tabasara in the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca near Tole to hold the Second National Forum Against Dams. CARITAS was the lead organization, but there were people from a number of community groups opposed to dams in their areas, the Ngobe-Bugle Student Federation, the dissident Naso faction that opposes the king over the hydroelectric project that he supports in the Teribe River watershed, various Panamanian environmentalist organizations and movements in neighboring Central American countries.

The conference passed a resolution warning that "biodiversity is threatened, and if nature on our planet is threatened so is human life itself, which depends upon it." It criticized the hydroelectric industry, disputing the claim that it's part of the development process because the social and economic costs to local communities outweigh the benefits that they receive. It denounced the close relationships between the private promoters of dam projects and governments, and denounced much of the hydroelectric industry as a Trojan horse for the privatization of water rather than a solution to the nation's energy problems.

The groups in attendance vowed to expand their network and to build their technical, scientific and legal teams in order to be able to more effectively fight hydroelectric projects.

Also in this section:
When visiting El Valle...
Dam opponents release Rio Teta environmental study