More than 500 dams in the country have completed their life cycle, almost all lack of maintenance and, say experts on the subject, contributing to climate change. However, the Federal Government gives priority to power generation and has filled dams regardless of the catastrophic effects of overflows and vents, as well as management of funds and turbid water resources on communities. The consequences were already in Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas, as in Tabasco and Veracruz in this hurricane season. And there are plans to build more dams without contingency plans.
dams
El Diario de Coahuila. Sunday, September 26, 2010
MEXICO CITY .- The recent flooding in several states have made clear one of many problems: 500 of the largest Mexican prisoners arrived at the end of its useful life, your curtains have cracks and sedimentation, its uptake and storage capacity has been reduced even up to 50%. Must be closed, but the pressure of transnational interested in monopolizing the sale of energy the Federal Government refuses to cancel. This conclusion
reach environmental researchers, specialists in the construction, operation and management of dams in Mexico, Gustavo Castro Soto, the Association of Other Worlds, and Jalisco Villamizar Juan Pablo Soler, who are monitoring existing dams and those that are to be bid and constructed in the country. With 537
Mexico ranks twelfth in the number of dams built-China has 22 000 and U.S. 6 000 375 - and the seventh for the control of floods. However from 2007 the rains exceeded the capacity of several of them in Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, Chiapas, Veracruz and Tabasco.
This year most of the reservoirs reached at 100% capacity. His dump collapsed bridges, cut roads and collapsed roads and services public, many people were killed and hundreds of thousands were left homeless or lost their crops and livelihoods, experts agree.
"There are over 500 large dams in the country, dams and water catchment or flood-control and overwhelmed. They arrived at 100% capacity. The country's dams have collapsed. There is now a high rainfall that was given before and after 2007 became more acute, "said Castro Soto. Add
not take into account that dams contribute to climate change. The topsoil of the planet absorbs 40% of the carbon from the atmosphere, if dams are constructed surface decreases and increases plant the concentration of gases like carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. The phenomenon increases with the displacement of thousands of people (whose lands are flooded by reservoirs) that have had to go and live in other areas and thus cut down forests or jungles to build homes and open areas of cultivation.
The environmentalist says the dams and have flaws or cracks or have exceeded their useful life because they were built 40 or 50 years by the accumulation of sediment each year the reservoirs lose 1% of its capacity to capture and therefore fill up faster.
desilting dam adds that involves an investment of millions of dollars that no government provides when building the dam. So, decades later chooses to raise the curtain to capture more water, which means more land flooded their land and move to more farmers.
"The Commission Federal de Electricidad (CFE) and the National Water Commission (Conagua)-those responsible for the operation of dams, have never maintained, though all states have reported cracks in the dams." HYDROELECTRIC
dams meeting UNDERUTILIZED
Castro Soto notes that, according to 2009 data from the Superior Audit of the Federation, in terms of production of hydroelectric energy, only 45% of installed capacity was utilized by the CFE. Adds that it is therefore illogical to announce the construction of more dams.
"What we started doing the Mexican government is what is being done in Panama: forget construct large dams and small dams. But it is a trap because the rivers are being privatized. TNCs are left with the granting of a surface water tributary to generate five to 10 megawatts (mw) and sell them ... but to build small dams along a river, it will be empty, dry.
"In Veracruz there are companies that are acquiring the concessions, but at the time of privatization water shallow rivers and removed privatized communities and ejidos their benefit. They can no longer dispose of the water. The development of these projects means no water left thousands of hectares of crops and also happen, as in Panama, downstream farmers run out of water and pasture for their animals.
- Why the government promotes these micro?
-The World Commission on Dams was clear in its analysis of its negative impact and yet the government continues on the logic of generating electricity when not even being consumed, this is one of the great contradictions, "says Castro Soto.
"The government gives in to pressure from the multinational industry that thrives on large dams, as the trend of infrastructure, water and rivers, as well as distribution and marketing of electric power is delivered to monopolies supported by the World Bank (WB) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to give loans more quickly and less transparency, "said Castro Soto in his hand Do not be prey to the dams that will start shipping next month.
According to the environmentalist, institutions like the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, IDB and the International Monetary Fund put the water in the hands of corporations. Two of them, the U.S. Bechtel and Monsanto to privatize and control water in countries such as India, Bolivia and Mexico.
notes that the government of Vicente Fox launched the privatization process of the liquid with WB support. French transnational Suez has won several privatization deals, like Vivendi and Bechtel, the latter with the name of United Utilities. The latter policy is to eliminate the quotas fixed in the service of water and gradually raise them, increasing poverty in the shantytowns. Vivendi and Suez now control access to drinking water of more than 100 million people worldwide.
According to the manual of Castro Soto, Mexico has given the grant of power generation English multinational companies such as Endesa, Iberdrola and Union Fenosa and has benefited a German consortium including Siemens, Hochtief and RWB and the Japanese Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Nichimen, Japan Power and EPCC Japan, among others.
WATER BUSINESS
The manual also includes monopolies monopolize the sale of bottled water, Coca-Cola (Ciel, Dasani, Bonaqua), Pepsi-Cola (Aguafina and Electropura), Nestlé (Santa Maria, Purity Vital, Nestle Pure Life, Aquarel, Viladrau Peñaclara, Perrier, Vittel, San Narcisco, Imperial) and Danone (Bonafont Purity Water, Evian, Font Vella and Lanjarón). It accounts for annual revenues of 22 billion dollars and used 113 billion gallons of water, with an annual increase of 7%.
In Mexico, according to official figures, more than 12 million people lack access to clean water. According to the researcher, the "ambition" of transnational corporations to take over the water can lead to conflict over, among many others, the Lempa river (Guatemala-Honduras-El Salvador), Bravo (Mexico-USA), De La Plata (Argentina-Uruguay) and Usumacinta (Guatemala-Mexico). As soon
internal conflicts through the creation of dams are worse in Mexico: scientists and environmentalists from the UNAM and Universidad Autónoma de Nayarit (UAN) raise their voices because of the risk involved in hydroelectric Las Cruces, the CFE aims to build on the San Pedro River, the main tributary of the strip of marsh called National Wetlands , Nayarit and Sinaloa.
On September 13 people and communities threatened with dispossession and displacement caused by dam projects La Parota, in Guerrero, Paso de la Reina, in Oaxaca; The Zapotillo and Archdeacon, in Jalisco, as well as displaced by the El Cajon dam, President Calderón delivered the manifesto for the respect of our rights and for the cancellation of projects dams, which exposed him "once again" the "gravity" of the damaged environment and social character that means imposing such projects.
There is another problem. The rivers of Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize and the south-southeast of Mexico, countries belonging to the Mesoamerican Project (formerly "Plan Puebla-Panama), are threatened by any new dams, with to integrate the electrical system in a network with a single law, and invested in the IDB, the Electric Interconnection System for Central American Countries (SIEPAC) will be left to corporations the power and water sector in that region.
Mesoamerica Project In Mexico intends to build on Boca del Cerro, in the Usumacinta, the biggest river in the country, there will arise a gravity dam with six turbine generators of 700 MW each, for which 30 000 will be flooded acres and move to 50 thousand people. Mexican intervene here Ingenieros Civiles Asociados (ICA), Vivendi, Fluor and the CFE. (APRO)
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