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Editor Sir,

In The Telegram’s July 26 article, "Protesters jumping the gun: Fortis," Fortis’ president Stanley Marshall gets it wrong when he accuses environmentalists of not knowing the facts and being closed-minded about his company’s proposed hydro dam in Belize.

Opposition to the Chalillo dam has developed after careful scrutiny of the proponents’ feasibility study and environmental impact assessments, as well as years of independent research in the Macal watershed.

The proponents’ own studies confirm that this nine- megawatt dam will wipe out critical and irreplaceable habitat for rare and endangered wildlife and act which would be illegal in the United States and parts of Canada.

To protect this river valley, conservation groups sought advice from independent economists and discovered two things:

1) That the $28-million dam would be an expensive and unreliable power provider; and

2) That Belize Electricity Limited, which is majority-owned by Fortis, is denying consumers access to better and cheaper generating options.

One needs only look at the performance of the existing hydro dam on the Macal River, further downstream of the Chalillo site, to know what to expect from Chalillo. That dam is crippled by water shortages during the five-month dry season, which means that Belize Electricity Limited has to pay for alternative power when the dam can’t produce.

This helps explain why Belizean consumers are currently paying two to three times more for their electricity than their neighbours in Mexico and Guatemala, where high-efficiency gas turbines are the power source of choice.

Furthermore, cogeneration using sugar and citrus waste by- products is another attractive option for Belize’s largest power consumers.

The only reason Chalillo appears viable at this stage is because Belize Electricity Limited has the monopoly power to recover the dam’s uncompetitive costs from the captive ratepayers.

With guaranteed revenues and no competitors, it’s Fortis’ Inc. that is closed-minded about Belize’s electricity options.

Signed: Grainne Ryder
Policy Director, Probe International
Toronto, Ontario