outdoors

Rio Teta in San Carlos faces  a new threat

by Eric Jackson, photos by DGA

Recall that a dam that's about 80 percent complete on the Rio Teta in San Carlos remains unfinished after it was exposed in The Panama News for being a bogus hydroelectric project that was actually about appropriating public water resources to sell for private developments in the area. The coverage in The Panama News prompted a flurry of denials and a so far unrealized threat of prosecution for criminal defamation, but some of the things that other people did halted the dam.

The dam's developer, Hidroelectrica San Carlos SA, sought to avoid the usually required environmental impact reviews and permits by availing itself of the exception for certain power generating dams. Other than the Potemkin village nature of the power generating facility that this publication demonstrated, it turns out that even accepting the false characterization at face value, environmental activists and lawyers discovered that the dam was not located where the company said it would be located and was not being built according to plans on file. That, and some polluting activities on the construction site, prompted the National Environmental Authority (ANAM) to assert jurisdiction and issue a stop work order.

The project had acquired international notoriety because the first people to raise the alarm were surfers concerned that the dam would cut the flow of sand to the river's mouth. That, in turn, would destroy the sandbar that serves as the wave break that makes Punta Teta such a good surfing beach. Last October Surfing magazine listed Punta Teta as one of the world's five most environmentally threatened surfing beaches.

Cover of the Surfing magazine issue that listed Punta Teta

as one of the world's five most threatened surfing spots

"A hydroelectric dam was under construction last year on the Rio Teta, on Panama's Pacific coast, threatening to cut of sand flow to one of the area's prime surf spots," the magazine reported. "'Sand depletion on our beaches has already become a huge issue in this region,' states Rio Mar Surf Camp owner Allen Barnes, 'leading to problems such as beach erosion and wave quality degradation.' Save the Waves has funded the initial stages of an alternative EIR, motivating the government of Panama to put the project on hold...," the magazine reported.

Now, however, the Rio Teta faces the possibility that in addition to water and sand it will carry solid garbage or noxious ash or liquid runoff from a new dump. According to downstream residents and an attorney researching the case, it appears that the required studies for this dump have not been done and the required permits have not been obtained.

Of course, in this country and most others what's legal, or allowed by authorities as such, is quite often very different from what's wise. At a glance it appears likely that effluent from the new dump will get into a creek that feeds the Rio Teta.

The dump (vertedero) is on a hill less than a kilometer above one of the Rio Teta's tributary streams

You pass this school (Escuela La Peña) along the way

And you get to this nondescript gate (porton) at the dump

Seen from higher ground above, the dump looks like this

Ashes and debris, sliding down the hill toward the creek

Also in this section:
Rio Teta now threatened by a garbage dump
An oil spill in Bocas
Dry season cascada
Greenpeace tracks illegal cod trafficking