Meb Cutlack
The Reporter (Belize)
June 3, 2001

In blatant disregard for the truth, the Belize Electricity Limited C.E.O. and a Belize Government representative have told Fortis Inc. shareholders and the Canadian press untruth after untruth about the Chalillo hydro project.  

In reports in the Canadian Press last week, both BEL chief executive officer, Lynn Young, and Norris Hall, described as a public relations officer for Belize government investments, attended a Fortis meeting in Canada and there misrepresented the Chalillo project in the following manner.

Despite obvious evidence – in daily talk shows and in the weekly press in Belize – about the growing disquiet over the Chalillo dam, BEL’s Lynn Young stated uneqivicably:”You would be hard-pressed to find anyone in Belize who is opposed to the project.”

Norris Hall, in I am sure an unintentional contradiction to Mr Young, stated that “opponents” to the dam project show “a total lack of respect for our sovereignty and environmental laws.” Well, that at least established that there are opponents but surely

Mr. Hall is aware that it is also on sovereignty and environental law issues that dam opponents are fighting Fortis. Sovereignty went out the window when Fortis, a non-Belizean company with responsiblity only to its Canadian shareholders, became the absolute majority owner of BEL. As for environemntal laws, Mr. Hall should realise that BACONGO and other Belizean organisations see Belize’s excellent environmental laws as the ultimate weapon against the dam – no matter what sort of approval certification any tame pro-dam group give Chalillo.

Mr.Young told his Canadian audience: “studies have shown that the current proposal for a dam on the Macal River is the best possible way to proceed.” He did not mention that many of these studies in fact described the Chalillo project as both un-economic and unwise. He did not mention that there have not been adequate hydrology and geological studies in either the catchment or dam site areas. He did not site evidence from existing geological data or the opinion of leading geologists that the dam site is “totally unsuitable” because it lies where two seismic fault lines meet and where there are substantial limestone caves and deposits. He also failed to answer why vital evidence by experts hired to produce the 1999 feasibility study was supressed and missing from that study.

Mr. Hall was equally deceptive to the Canadians when he implied that Chalillo would “reduce electricity costs to stimulate development, attract investment and pay more than lip service to the alleviation of poverty which plagues more than one third of the country’s population.” He did not ask the Canadian press to do the simple sum of how you reduce electricity costs by spending a possible total (three dams, three power houses) of $270,000,000 dollars on dams built along a river that often runs almost dry during the dry season. He did not mention that that pay-back will have to be made by the minus 50,000 heads of husehold in Belize who pay the electric bills. He did not mention that this $270,000,000 cost amortized over 30 ro 50 years comes to not millions but billions of dollars chained around the neck of future generations of Belizeans to be paid back in precious U.S. dollars!

Luckily there was more than one voice speaking for Belizeans in Canada at the same time that Mr.Young and Mr.Hall were tellig their stories.

BEL’s former senior planner and hydro engineer, Ambrose Tillet, explained that the Chalillo dam made no economic sense but that cogeneration with Belize’s sugar industry could power the country and at the same time stabalize and diversify Belize’s ailing sugar industry. He said that Chalilllo had “derailed other energy options, adding, “It’s even more perlexing since the Chalillo dam is being constructed to fix the problems of an older dam built on the Macal River.

“What happened is the original dam was built on a river that goes dry in the dry season. The new dam is an attempt to store water so that the old dam will have some water in the dry season.”

On the issue of environmental damage, Sharon Matola of the Belize Zoo told the Canadian Press that the dam would flood an area of tropical forest that is the only undisturbed habitat left for many of Belize’s and Central America’s endangered species.

“Belize has become a kind of Noah’s Ark for endangered species,” she said and added that the loss of the area could have devastating repercussions for Belize’s tourism industry and therefore its entire economy.