Probe International – Press Release

November 15, 2001

Belize government decision to grant clearance to Newfoundland-based Fortis Inc. for its proposed Chalillo hydro dam contravenes Belize environmental law, say citizens groups.

The government of Belize has given Newfoundland-based Fortis Inc. environmental clearance to build a hydro dam that would flood one of Central America’s last unspoiled rainforests. Belizean anti-poverty and conservation groups opposed the decision taken by the National Environmental Appraisal Committee last Friday, saying that it was rushed through without public hearings. The committee’s nine government members voted to approve Fortis’s environmental impact assessment, while its two non-government members, the Association of National Development Agencies, and BACONGO (Belize Alliance of Conservation NGOs), voted against it. “This decision contravenes Belize law,” says Jamillah Vasquez, Executive Director of BACONGO, “which requires that public hearings be conducted and all submissions from scientists and concerned citizens be reviewed by the committee.” Ms. Vasquez adds that the committee dismissed the main recommendation from Fortis’s own wildlife consultants, the British Natural History Museum, that the dam should not be built because it will devastate Belize wildlife and migratory bird populations. In a nod to the dam’s opponents, the committee said it would hold public hearings to explain its decision and that clearance is conditional upon the development of plans for coping with the dam’s environmental damages. But Ms. Vasquez and other critics, say this only adds insult to injury. “Public hearings after the decision are not public hearings, they’re propaganda,” said Candy Gonzalez, a legal advisor to BACONGO. “What’s more, the committee’s approval of this dam without any public hearings shows a disregard for the rights of Belize citizens to due process and the rule of law.” The decision to give Fortis the go-ahead comes amidst mounting local and international opposition. Four hundred people gathered last week in the nation’s capital, Belmopan, to protest against the dam and Fortis’s electricity monopoly, which has Belizeans paying three times what Canadians pay for electricity. In Toronto earlier this month, Canadian environmentalists, including Newfoundland’s political satirist Greg Malone, were joined by prominent environmental lawyer Robert Kennedy Jr., and groups from Belize, to protest Fortis’s dam. “Fortis could never get clearance for such an environmentally damaging hydro scheme in Newfoundland,” says Gr inne Ryder of Toronto-based Probe International, the group which first exposed that the Canadian International Development Agency is backing Fortis’s plans. “Fortis is giving Canadian corporations a bad name in Central America by destroying the environment and gouging ratepayers.”

CONTACT:
Grainne Ryder, Policy Director, Probe International,
Toronto, Canada, Tel.: (416) 964-9223 ext.228

Jamillah Vasquez, Executive Director, BACONGO,
Belize, Tel:. (501) 2 33385