Brazilian Dam Causes Too Much or Too Little Water in Amazon Villages
A
chicken coop in the village of Miratu, flooded because the Xingu River
rose much more than was announced by Norte Energía, the company that
built and operates the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant, whose main
reservoir is some 20 km upstream from the Juruna community in Brazil’s
northern Amazon jungle region. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS
ALTAMIRA, Brazil, Apr 1 2017 (IPS) -
The Juruna indigenous village of Miratu mourned the death of Jarliel
twice: once on October 26, when he drowned in the Xingu River, and the
second time when the sacred burial ground was flooded by an unexpected
rise in the river that crosses Brazil’s Amazon region.
Their
cries are also of outrage against the Norte Energía company, the
concession-holder for the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam, which determines
the water flow in the Volta Grande stretch of the Xingu River, a 100-km
area divided in three municipalities, with five indigenous villages
along the riverbanks.
Jarliel Juruna, 20, was very good at what he
did: catch ornamental fish, which have been increasingly scarce since
the dam was inaugurated in November 2015. Apparently the need to dive
deeper and deeper to find fish and help support his family contributed
to the fatal accident, according to his siblings Jailson and Bel.
The
company had ensured that the rise in water level in that area would be
moderate, since the flow was divided between the Volta Grande and a
canal built to feed the main Belo Monte generating plant, near the end
of the curve in the river known as Volta Grande or Big Bend.
The
markers showing how high the water would rise were surpassed early this
year, due to heavy rains and a limited diversion of the water to be used
by the hydroelectric plant, which will be the third largest in the
world in terms of capacity once it is completed in 2019.
The
unexpected rise also caused material losses. Boats and equipment were
carried away by the high water. “My manioc crop was flooded, even though
it was on land higher than the markers,” said Aristeu Freitas da Silva,
a villager in Ilha da Fazenda.
Despite the excess of water, this village of 50 families is suffering a lack of drinking water.
“The
river is dirty, we drink water from a well that we dug. The three wells
drilled by Norte Energía don’t work because the water pump broke eight
months ago,” said Miguel Carneiro de Sousa, a boatman hired by the
municipality to ferry students to a nearby school.
The school in Ilha da Fazenda only goes up to fourth grade, and in Brazil education is compulsory up to the ninth grade.
Bel
Juruna, a Juruna indigenous leader from the village of Miratu along the
Volta Grande of the Xingu River. The 25-year-old woman is an impressive
voice in the defence of indigenous rights, against the Belo Monte
hydropower plant and inefficient government authorities, in this
territory in Brazil’s Amazon region. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS
Deiby
Cardoso, deputy mayor of Senador José Porfirio, one of the
municipalities in Volta Grande, admitted that water supply is a
municipal responsibility, and promised that the problem would be
resolved by late April.
He did so during a Mar. 21 public hearing
organised by the public prosecutor’s office in the city of Altamira, to
address problems affecting Volta Grande. IPS attended the hearing as
part of a one-week tour of riverbank and indigenous villages in this
area.
Taking over the Xingu River for energy purposes, to the
detriment of its traditional users, such as indigenous and riverine
peoples, has cost Norte Energía many obligations and complaints in its
area of influence in the northern state of Pará, where local people
sometimes confuse its role with that of the government.
The
company is required to carry out a plan for compensation and mitigation
of social and environmental impacts, with conditional targets, and the
number of complaints about non-compliance is increasing.
Local
residents of Ilha da Fazenda had reasons to complain at the hearing. The
health post is filthy and abandoned, the ambulance boat has a broken
motor, and the electricity produced by the village generator is only
available from 6:00 to 10:00 PM.
The deputy mayor accepted the
complaints about the delays, which he said were due to the short period
that the municipal government has been in power, since January.
The
unkempt health post in Ilha da Fazenda, one of the villages on the
banks of the Xingu River affected by the construction of the Belo Monte
hydroelectric plant, in the state of Pará in Brazil’s Amazon region.
Credit: Mario Osava/IPS
But holding the key to the Xingu
River, opening or closing spillways and activating or shutting off its
turbines, Norte Energía dictates the water level downstream, especially
in the Volta Grande. At the hearing, it seemed clear that they do it
without considering the human and environmental impacts.
“The
water level drops and rises all of a sudden, without warning,”
complained Bel Juruna, a 25-year-old community leader and defender of
indigenous peoples’ rights who talked to IPS during the visit to the
village of Miratu.
“These abrupt fluctuations in the volume of
water released in the Volta Grande produce changes in the water level in
the river that confuse the aquatic fauna, disoriented by the
availability of space to feed and breed,” said ecologist Juarez Pezzuti,
a professor at the Federal University of Pará.
And once the hydroelectric plant starts to operate normally, the water flow will be permanently reduced, he added.
The
local people are informed daily, through phones installed by the
company in many houses, about the volume of water that enters Volta
Grande. But this information about cubic metres per second means nothing
to them.
“The information has to be useful,” adding the water
level in the river in each village, the local indigenous people told the
authorities present at the hearing, who included prosecutors, public
defenders and heads of the environmental and indigenous affairs
agencies.
There is a “failure of communication” that Energía Norte
needs to fix, it was agreed during the hearing, where there were no
representatives of the company.
Indigenous
houses, practically submerged by the unexpected rise of the Xingu
River. These traditional houses of the Juruna people give support to the
“canoada”, a tourist and political event that the native people
organize each September along the Volta Grande, in the northern Amazon
state of Pará in Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS
Safety of
navigation is another demand by the Juruna and Arara native people, who
live on the banks of the Volta Grande. The damming of the river
exacerbated the “banzeiros” (turbulence or rapids), which have already
caused one death, early this year.
The local indigenous peoples
are demanding large vessels, one for each of the five villages, to cross
the reservoir to Altamira, the capital of the Medio Xingú region,
without the risks that threaten their small boats.
They are also
asking for support equipment for the most turbulent stretches of the
Volta Grande, from August to November, when small dangerous rocky
islands emerge due to the low water level.
The reduced water flow
has made navigation difficult in the Volta Grande, the traditional
transport route used by local people, increasing the need for land
transport.
An access road to the routes that lead to Altamira is a chief demand of the Arara people.
“It
was a condition of the building permit for Belo Monte, to this day
unfulfilled. We have been waiting for that road since 2012,” protested
José Carlos Arara, leader of the village of Guary-Duan.
They
rejected the handing over of a Base of Operations that Norte Energía
built for the National Indian Foundation, the state body for the defence
of indigenous rights, to protect their territory. “With no land access,
we won’t accept the base, because it will be incomplete,” said Arara,
supported by leaders of other villages.
To improve territorial
protection and the participation of indigenous people in the committees
that deal with indigenous issues and those involving Volta Grande within
the programmes of compensation and mitigation of impacts of Belo Monte
is another common demand, submitted to the hearing in a letter signed by
the Arara and Juruna people.
The need for protection was stressed
by Bebere Bemaral Xikrin, head of the association of the Xikrin people,
from the Trincheira-Bacajá indigenous land.
Since mid-2016, the
waters of the Bacajá River have been dirty, which has killed off fish.
The reason is the “garimpo” or informal surface mining along tributary
rivers of the Bacajá, on the outskirts of the Xikrin territory.
And
things will get worse with the construction of a road to bring in
machinery for the garimpeiros or informal miners, if the Protection
Plan, which was to be ready in 2011 “but hasn’t made it from paper to
reality, is not fully implemented soon,” said Bebere Bemaral.
The
Xikrin people do not live along the Volta Grande, but everything that
happens in that stretch of the Xingu River affects the Bacajá, a
tributary of the Xingu, which this people depend on for survival, he
explained.
The rivers which were the lifeblood of local indigenous
and riverine people became a risk factor with the implementation of a
hydropower megaproject, to which could be added the Belo Sun mining
project, also on the banks of the Volta Grande.
My comments:
Are Bakun Dam, Murum dam and Batang Ai dam causing too
much water or too little water to the villages, towns and cities in
Sarawak? Check and see.
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