Graeme Smith
Globe and Mail
November 2, 2001

Economic benefits ‘probably . . . zero,’ Kennedy says of project in crucial rainforest.

(Excerpt)

The slick multimedia presentation by Robert Kennedy in a boardroom at the Toronto Stock Exchange yesterday looked like any other Bay Street sales pitch. But rather than trying to strike a deal, Mr. Kennedy’s group of environmentalists was trying to scuttle a $45-million transaction between a Newfoundland power company and the government of Belize. Fortis Inc. has been contracted to build a hydroelectric dam on the Macal River Valley near Chalillo, Belize, in January, a project that environmentalists say would flood a crucial tract of rain forest and wipe out endangered species. “The economic benefits of this project will probably be zero for the people of Belize,” said Mr. Kennedy, a conservationist and son of the assassinated U.S. attorney-general. “The dam will create, at most, 12 permanent jobs.” The press conference kicked off a last-ditch advertising campaign aimed at pressing Fortis to drop the project. The environmental groups plan to spend $25,000 on print and television ads in Newfoundland and Ontario. Besides criticizing the government of Belize and Fortis, the advertisements take aim at the federal government for sponsoring an environmental assessment of the project. “Our government spent $250,000 to help ram through the project in secrecy,” the newspaper ads read. The ads are part of the latest salvo in a continuing battle between supporters and opponents of the dam. Government officials in Belize maintain that the construction is necessary to increase water flow to an existing facility downstream, to protect the area from occasional flash floods and to promote economic development. “The Macal River is not the home of the world’s rarest and most endangered species,” the cabinet secretary of Belize, Robert Leslie, wrote in a recent letter to the Globe and Mail. He did not return calls yesterday. “The Chalillo dam site was actually the site of a logging camp several years ago,” Mr. Leslie added. “Upstream from the Chalillo site is the tropical training area for the British Army, including an area reserved for live firing.” But environmentalists cite an impact report paid for by the Canadian International Development Agency and conducted by the Natural History Museum of London, which concludes that the dam would threaten at least 12 rare or endangered species. “The project is likely to cause significant and irreversible reduction of biological diversity,” the report states. Such an outcome would be tragic, environmentalists say.