Meb Cutlack
The Reporter (Belize)
February 9, 2001

The firing of a San Ignacio school teacher is an example of the government’s furious and senseless lashing out at well versed and articulate environment critics whom the government cannot answer with either logic or good sense.

The firing of San Ignacio school teacher Kimo Jolly is not just a case of the government getting rid of a minor irritant in its present campaign to discredit environmentalists and the environmental movement in Belize generally, but rather the furious and senseless lashing out at a well versed and articulate critic whom they cannot answer with either logic or good sense.

It isn’t that Mr. Jolly was not doing his job but that he was doing it too well. Mr. Jolly’s qualifications as an environemtal scientist are unchallengable and the classes he taught, ranging from impact assessment, coastal management, forestry management and water shed management, would normally suit an enlightened and environmentally conscious government intent on protecting and enhancing Belize’s precious flora, fauna and natural endowments. They obviously do not suit this government, which seems bent on tearing up the rules that protect all of the above.

That’s where Mr Jolly made his mistake (as far as the government was concerned). He should have listened to their warning last year when his questioning and probing of the Chalillo Dam issue did not please them. He should have stopped being an honest teacher and toed the line. Instead he did his job and gave his students his learned and honest assessment of not just Chalillo but also other areas where his training showed him that crucial environmental issues were being swept aside in government’s preoccupation with pushing ahead on some very dubious projects indeed.

Mr. Jolly’s dismissal is not the first firing of a qualified expert in connection with Chalillo. The first to go was Belize Electcity Limited’s own hydro engineer, Ambrose Tillet. Mr. Tillet’s problem, as far as BEL and government was concerned, was that right from the beginning with the Mollejon hydro dam, and then with Chalillo, Mr. Tillet expressed his grave doubts about the feasibility and economic potential of hydro power on the Macal River. He even went public with his criticism at a press conference when Chalillo was first presented to the press.

These firings show a government acting with increasing irrationality, by now bordering on paranoia, which contradicts everything so many voters were lured into believing at the last general election. Reform! Transparency! Openness! Consulting the people! These words are today a mockery, a grim reminder, once more, that politicians and truth don’t often mix but instead tend to separate like oil and water.

The recent glib and almost indecent manner in which BEL and their Canadian owners, Fortis Inc., have programmed in the completion of Chalillo in 2003 is very much in line with government’s own casual disregard of the environmental laws of Belize which specifically state that “alternative” power sources must be fully investigated BEFORE such potentially damaging projects are undertaken. In the case of Chalillo, hundreds of thousands of dollars have already been spent fruitlessly trying to prove that the dam is environmentally safe and economically beneficial while almost nil has been allocated for true research into biomass power as a cheap and healthy alternative.

Is biomass power a viable alternative? I am happy to provide BEL and Fortis with recent information which they should have on this issue and which comes directly from the U.S. government.

“The US Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded funds of up to $14.8 million to Novozymes Biotech, Inc., a US-based subsidiary of Novozymes A/S, for the development of enzymes for ethanol production in support of the Biomass Research and Development Act of 2000.

“The funding will support research for developing high-efficiency enzymes systems that can reduce the cost of converting plant material into fermentable sugars for the production of fuels and chemicals. The enzymes will provide a critical step in further developing a biomass-to-ethanol industry.” The report concludes: “If the enzymes needed to convert biomass can be purchased for less than 10 cents per gallon of ethanol produced (compared to 45 cents today), the cost of making ethanol for the fuel alcohol industry could drop to 75 cents a gallon, making it economically feasible to use biomass waste products for bioethanol production.”

It is verging on a criminal act on the part of BEL and the Belize Government not to fully investigate the possible implications for Belize of cheap biomass power in the future. Not only could such power make Chalillo totally unnecessary and so save one of the most pristine wildlife areas left in Central America – and indeed in the whole of the Americas – but it could create a power corridor in the north of the country to revive and benefit Orange Walk and Corozal and enrich the entire population of Belize.

One can only conclude that the government’s behaviour over Kimo Jolly, its stated intention of going ahead with Chalillo at any price, its defence of the mile 27 dump site against all objective scientific opinion and, most recently, its covert and hurried preparations to sell WASA, can only suggest that there is a group of people in government who intend to make a lot of money from these projects.

It is time that honest men in the government and in the PUP stand up and identify themselves – or else risk going down with a ship that, at this moment, looks to be headed for disaster. The captain should return to the bridge and tell his purser that the course he is taking will steer the ship onto the rocks and order him to leave the deck and go back below where he belongs – to mind the ship’s accounts and to quit trying to navigate!