The British multi-national engineering giant AMEC, BECOL and Fortis
Inc., of Canada will be hard pressed during next week’s Privy Council
Chalillo Dam hearing (December 3rd and 4th) to defend themselves
against charges of endangering human life by deliberately omitting
vital geological data on the proposed Chalillo dam. Maps prepared by
these companies and submitted to the Belize government for the
Environmental Impact Assessment of the controversial dam on
the Macal River reveal that a number of geological fault lines were
deliberately erased. The missing fault lines crisscross the site where
the Chalillo dam is now being built. Documents submitted to the court
include a map prepared with Canadian taxpayer dollars by AMEC, which
shows where fault lines next to the dam site were erased. In comparison
with the original Bateson and Hall map, upon which these maps are
based, the Fortis/AMEC map does not include these prominent faults. A
dam break at Chalillo could send a hundred foot high wall of water
sweeping through the twin towns of San Ignacio and Santa Elena a few
miles below the dam site with catastrophic effects.
Critics, who have pointed out the faulty geology from the very
beginning, now also say that failure to correctly assess the site’s
strengths and weaknesses has become a serious cause for alarm. For
years both Fortis and AMEC have defended their original geological
survey of the area, denying reports that the study was seriously
flawed. AMEC originally identified the entire dam site as composed of a
granite sub-surface, but after extensive searching contractors have not
been able to find any granite at the site. Instead they have found
shale and sandstone.
Drilling at the site has also revealed water flowing underground. This
could be due to extensive underground cave systems or fissures in the
earth. The absence of a solid granite bedrock presents the nightmarish
possibility that the dam could in time become a giant sump-hole under
the tremendous weight of accumulated water. Earlier this month a
fissure in the ground, some 60 feet deep at the dam
site, was explained away by BECOL officials as caused by a dislodgement
of boulders due to torrential rain. Some geologists however do not
agree. The fissure appeared around the time of a number of reported
tremors around Mexico and Central America, and could have been caused
by an earth tremor, they say.