On September 7, Mongabay highlighted concerns raised by local indigeneous groups regarding governmental plans to move forward with building the Chepete/El Bala megadams. The Spanish-language article noted that “There are more than 5,000 indigenous people affected by the floods as a result of the construction of the dams.” Unfortunately, these plans have created a division amongst local indigeneous groups. According to Mongabay, “a group of 10 organizations has signed an agreement with the state electric power company that approves the start of feasibility studies.”
Previous plans to build megadams in this area had been rejected by both local indigeneous communities, and their “economic unfeasibility and high environmental cost.”
The article quotes Alex Villca, “part of the National Coordinator for the Defense of Indigenous Peasant Territories and Protected Areas ( Contiocap ) of Bolivia” : ““This would imply a forced displacement and that is to take away our territory. We would be forced to leave our spaces, our ancestral domains. We would be giving up what is most vital: without territory there are no indigenous peoples. This would be accepting a silent death. Wherever they take us, it will never be the same.”
“Last week, the state-owned Empresa Nacional de Energía Eléctrica (ENDE) resumed commissioning of the Chepete and El Bala hydroelectric project. It launched a call for companies for geological and geotechnical research. According to the invitation COR-GPP-BAL-22-2021, ENDE called for proposals for the “Complementary geological-geotechnical research service”.
On August 16, The Central of Indigenous Peoples of La Paz (CPILAP) signed an agreement with ENDE “to allow Ende Cooperation and its contracted companies to enter the areas of direct and indirect influence to carry out research, information, socialization and data collection that allows studies, formulate projects. , to final design to implement electric power generation, transmission, and distribution projects ”. CPILAP is “a regional organization that brings together ten organizations of indigenous peoples from the department of La Paz.” According to Alex Villca, these organizations are “related to the Movement for Socialism (MAS), the party of Evo Morales and which is now in office.”
The President of CPILAP, Gonzalo Oliver Terrazas, was quoted in the article: “This agreement does not imply the construction of dams. The objective is to determine the feasibility or not of the project. Other important aspects of the agreement is the social component, which we have incorporated so that there can be electrification and housing projects.” [It is our view that if these communities are underwater with the building of the megadams, then benefits from electrification and housing projects will be extremely short-lived!]
In direct opposition to this view, the article also notes that “The Commonwealth of Indigenous Communities of the Beni, Tuichi and Quiquibey rivers, an organization that was created in 2001 to assume the defense of the ancestral territories of the six indigenous nations affected by the threat of the project, demands that a prior consultation be carried out to the communities to approve or not to carry out the hydroelectric project. A meeting was held last weekend and These towns met over the weekend in an assembly and decided to reject the government's initiative…”
The planned megadams “would flood at least 662 square kilometers. In other words, the two reservoirs would be five times larger than the urban area of the city of La Paz…The project consists of two hydroelectric plants on the Beni river: the first of them would be in the Chepete narrow, 70 kilometers upstream from the city of Rurrenabaque, in the department of Beni, and the second is close to the El narrow. Bala, 13.5 kilometers upstream from that same town.”
“The Chepete dam would raise the water level by 158 meters, forming a lake 400 meters above sea level. The El Bala dam would raise the water level by about 20 meters and its reservoir will be 220 meters above sea level. Unlike the Chepete dam, which would be a concrete wall, the El Bala dam would be made up of gates and generators that would be in the middle of the river.
According to the Solón Foundation, a total of 5164 people should be relocated, the majority of whom are indigenous…in the area there are 424 species of flora, 201 species of land mammals, 652 species of birds, 483 species of amphibians and reptiles, and 515 species of fish." For example, “the entire community of San Miguel del Bala would be flooded and there is no official information for the displacement of their residents. inhabitants, which are a little more than 1000 people.”
With the construction of the Chepete dam, “All the populated areas that this reservoir would affect, according to Geodata, are collectively titled lands that belong to the Tacanas, Lecos and Mosetenes indigenous peoples. In addition, touching the rivers in this area would be damaging the main livelihoods of the peoples: fishing, agriculture and, in recent times, community tourism, very affected by the coronavirus pandemic.”
According to Valentín Luna, a leader in the San Miguel del Bala community (Tacana) at least 20 eco-shelters (ecotourism) are located in the axis of the Madidi and Pilón Lajas nature reserves. “Most of these initiatives are managed from the indigenous communities themselves. If the hydroelectric project is executed, according to Luna, four of the eco-shelters would be affected by floods with the construction of the dams: the Chalalán shelter of the Uchupiamonas, the one run by the community members of San Miguel de Bala, the one in the community of Villa Alcira and the one run by the Chimanes and Mosetenes of Asunción del Quiquibey.”