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dam-l SARA editorial on dams/LS
This is the editorial comment in the latest SARA RiverNews.
STOP THE DAMS
Big dams are a feature of the South African landscape. They have been there
since at least the decade of the First World War, built by successive
governments to provide irrigation for farms, water and power for factories,
and sewage for cities. Dams are so common they seem "natural". The average
South African, standing next to a river, will cry out that "all this water
is running away to the sea and being wasted". The fact that rivers have
flowed for all time, supporting the surrounding ecology, seems to make
little difference to this mindset.
SARA has for a long time questioned the wisdom of damming the remaining
wild and free rivers in Southern Africa. New dams are planned or mooted for
the Orange, Tugela and Bushmans, Mkomazi, Mzimvubu, Doring, Cunene,
Kavango, Zambezi and other major rivers. Most of these rivers are already
penned-in by mighty concrete walls. The new dams add insult to injury.
But SARA faces a dilemma over its opposition to dams. Water transfer
schemes like those on the Katse, which sends water north to the Vaal, and
the Gariep, which sends water to the Great Fish River basin, are likely to
provide a constant flow for river tour operators. Reliable water flows
equal good business, and business is partly what SARA is about. We
constituted ourselves as an association to improve the image and
competitive position of river tourism. Dams do that, don't they?
Well, yes, and no. Once dams are built, the best we can hope for is that
their impacts will be mitigated - in other words, we have to make the best
of a bad job. One example of this is utilising the outflow for whitewater
sport and commercial operations, as is already happening on the Great Fish
and is suggested for the Ash River outfall at Clarens. SARA strongly
supports any move to make use of the water transfers in this way.
But face it, big dams do big damage to the environment and often to the
social fabric and heritage of the areas where they are built. The fact that
they may promote limited forms of ecotourism should not blind us to their
serious negative impacts.
Popular governments who have the interests of the mass of the people at
heart are constructing walls across valleys because this is the easiest -
and the most short-sighted - way to capture water. The Lesotho Highlands
Water Project (LHWP) will cost the SA taxpayer about R10billion, and the
planned new Thukela dam system R5-R6bn more. The costs will have to be met
by taxpayers and water users, mainly in Gauteng. Ironically, these RDP dams
will hit the poor hardest.
Despite the costs it is claimed that dams are good for development because
they bring roads, irrigation schemes, industries, ecotourism, and many
other benefits. In the world at large experience has proved otherwise. On
America's Colorado river ways are now being sought to decommission major
dams that were supposed to stand for all time and bring development to the
arid southwest.
By flooding river valleys we destroy precious riverine forests and biotic
communities. We drive people off the land, we drown their cultural
heritage. When riverbeds dry up due to damming, the dried-out mudbanks
collapse, causing serious siltation. And there are better ways to generate
electricity, using solar and wind power.
SARA's mission is to protect rivers, as the basis of our businesses, and
help create sustainable conditions for ecotourism. Big dams do neither.
They are literally costing us the earth and all our rivers. Only certain
groups benefit while the rest pay, and even those (like river operators)
who can make money from dam-controlled rivers are not assured that the
resource will remain reliable, because the water might be piped away to
save evaporation.
South Africa needs a Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, designating certain rivers
as inviolate, not to be dammed or opened to major constructions such as
roads and resorts. River guides and operators can promote this through
daily contact with corporate leaders and members of the public and media
who go on river trips.
By investing now in research and development into low-cost, low-impact
water-purifying technologies, South Africans could lead the way towards a
new water dispensation for the entire globe. Wars will be avoided, rural
peoples get their land back, producers have enough water for their needs,
and recreationists may continue to run rivers knowing that we have saved a
precious natural heritage from destruction.
Southern Africa Rivers Association (SARA) is an association of river
tourism interests. For more info, contact:
SARA
P.O. Box 645
Irene 0062, South Africa
Head Office: Ph/Fax: +27.12.667.1838
e-mail: sara@intekom.co.za
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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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