The Vaca hydropower facility was due to be completed by the end of January, but it faces a delay of at least a week, because the Department of the Environment (DOE) stepped in and stopped the project, claiming that its officers had found evidence of human faeces in a nearby stream used for drinking.
Stephen Usher, vice president of operations for the Belize Electric Company Limited (BECOL), told Amandala in an interview today that at about 3:20 on Monday afternoon, the DOE cited them for repeated infractions, after finding faecal coliforms (bacteria from faeces) in a stream they say was used to fill a storage tank for drinking.
As a result, said Usher, the company sent all the workers home – 350 Belizeans and 150 foreigners. These workers, paid only for hours they actually work, therefore won’t be paid for the week—and not until DOE gives BECOL the green light to proceed.
According to Usher, even though it is the Chinese subcontractor, Sinohydro Corporation, which has been cited for the infractions, BECOL, being the party to the Environmental Compliance Plan with the DOE, was the proper party to be served with the stop order.
He said that BECOL and DOE are scheduled to meet tomorrow, Friday, after which DOE would decide whether to let the construction of the $105 million Vaca Dam resume.
Usher told us that Sinohydro had claimed that they purchase purified water for workers and they do not drink from the river.
Candy Gonzalez, president of Belize Institute of Environmental Law and Policy (BELPO), a watchdog group in the area, says, that reports of faecal contamination at the BECOL dams are nothing new, as there have been complaints for over a year at another BECOL dam, Chalillo, that workers were defecating in the river because they preferred not to use the toilets because of hygiene concerns.
Gonzalez concludes that it is just a distraction tactic, coming on the heels of public outcry over the disturbing color of the Macal River, as we showed you in our midweek edition.
Usher told our newspaper that he, too, is concerned over what he’s been seeing in the waters—lots of sediments that appear to be pine ridge clay.
He said that this phenomenon has been occurring even before the construction of Chalillo, that the rivers would get that color every time when it rains very heavily at the start of the rainy season.
When we first looked into this story on Monday, Chief Environmental Officer, Martin Alegria, told our newspaper that he had never seen the waters that color before, and he guessed that one of two things could be the cause: deliberate flushing of the sediments at Chalillo or severe erosion from adjacent lands. Usher blames logging and clearings of vegetation upstream.
Alegria told us that he would have an update for us in about a week, as his officers would look into the matter.
Usher informed that this is the first time the murkiness has lasted this long, going into a third week.
“It doesn’t look like it’s improving,” said Usher.
We asked Usher whether they had done any flushing recently at Chalillo, and he told us that whenever they release water from the dam, they do it in small portions, and if that were the cause, the river would have already cleared up.
“We draw water from the bottom of the dam,” he claimed, saying that this is the reason why the water appears clear before reaching the dam but murky after it comes through the dam.
Although the source of the excessive river siltation has yet to be verified by local authorities, Gonzalez did get a US expert to give his informed opinion on the matter.
Gonzalez cites a correspondence from Dr. Guy Lanza, professor of microbiology and director of the environmental science program at the University of Massachusetts, which says, “The release is a major concern with regard to use of water for drinking and the overall water quality and ecology in both the impoundment and downstream in the Macal, Mopan, and Belize Rivers.”
Gonzalez says that the waters running through the Belize River Valley are also murky, from the Macal waters.
Lanza claims that the very high turbidity in the river water will cause ecological damage because light is being blocked from entering the water, and oxygen levels in the water will drop because plants won’t be able to photosynthesize. The sediments may also be abrasive to fish and other living forms in the water, Lanza adds.
But the most striking claim he makes in his e-mail is that it is impossible to purify water which is that muddy – and so it would be unsafe to drink.
“The levels in the photos below the Chalillo dam far exceed acceptable standards,” Lanza commented.
Usher claims that all subsidiaries of Fortis Inc., including BECOL, are compliant with the International Standards Organizations.