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dam-l Letter to Ed on SA dam/LS

This excellent letter has been sent to the editor of a South African newspaper.


17 June, 1999

The Editor

Daily News

Dear Sir

It is great alarm that we read your editorial of the 16 th June where you
lauded the proposed dams on the Thukela River and The Bushmans River.

Dams and in particular large dams have a negative environmental and social
impact, one only has to look at the Paris Dam in Northern KwaZuluNatal to
see who is impacted upon - Local communities are being moved in order for
water to be provided for sugar farmers in Pongola - for irrigation. The
decision for this dam was made without the benefit of an environmental
impact assessment (EIA). An EIA has since been commissioned due to public
outcry but is farcical in that the dam is already under construction and
the impact
assessment will only provide window dressing. The no go option which is a
cornerstone of the IEM process is not included.

The evidence of large dams throughout the world point again and again to the
consistent over estimation of benefits, the underestimation of the financial
costs and the erroneous assumption that the negative impacts can or will be
mitigated. On the contrary dams fall short of the promises they make, the
costs and time are usually far in excess of those foreseen and the negative
impacts are significant, cumulative and irreversible. These experiences have
been verified by the Katse dam in Lesotho, the Gariep dam, and many others.
In addition to this, the equity aspects of who gets the benefits and who
pays the costs are only now being investigated through the channels of the World
Commission on Dams, an international body which is acting like a Truth
Commission on dams trying to find the balance of truth in the controversies
around global dams.

If we look further afield to China where 1.3 million people are under
threat of losing their homes and their livelihoods due to the Three Gorges
dam project, and where over 230 000 people have already died due to dam
failures, to Thailand where at this very moment over 3000 people are
occupying the site of the Pak Mun dam in protest over what the dam has done
to their homes and to their fisheries, the basis of their sustained
livelihoods. To India where peasant farmers of the Narmada valley will face
devastation in this monsoon as the waters behind the Sardar Sarovar dam rise
to the new height of 88 m causing the submergence of thousands of houses and
farms.

Nearer home the Himba community and their nomadic desert lifestyle are under
threat from the proposed Epupa dam which if built will cause the evaporation
of 40 times the annual water requirements of Windhoek, the mountain
communities of Lesotho who even now await the compensation promised from the
building of the Katse dam and from the earthquake which damaged 70 homes, to
the Tonga people of Kariba whose descendants still carry the
scars of poverty from the forced removal from their fishing lifestyles next
to the river to the barren inland regions.

But please! Don't for one moment feel that we are opposed to providing of
water to communities and to industry in Gauteng. On the contrary we cite the
protests from the civic communities of Alexandra and Soweto who resent
paying increasing water prices as a result of the technocratic approach of DWAF,
whilst statistics show that 50% of the water entering Soweto is lost due to
leaking pipes and failing infrastructure. DWAF needs to take a leaf
out of Durban Metro's Book and use it - Develop a Water Demand Strategy.
Durban Metro has undertaken to keep domestic and industrial water
consumption at 1997 levels as part of their water demand management
strategy. This is being achieved by balancing the annual increase in demand
with a corresponding reduction in the water lost in the infrastructure.

Yours faithfully,

Bryan Ashe

For Earthlife Africa
Durban


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      Lori Pottinger, Director, Southern Africa Program,
        and Editor, World Rivers Review
           International Rivers Network
              1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, California 94703, USA
                  Tel. (510) 848 1155   Fax (510) 848 1008
                        http://www.irn.org
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