Wednesday
May112011
A dam here would forever change Chile's longest and wildest river.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011 at 12:00AM Despite growing public opposition, the Chilean Government has given environmental approval to dam two of Patagonia’s most wild and pristine rivers, the Baker and the Pascua.
The project also calls for a 1,500-mile chain of huge power-line towers to transmit electricity to the north. The power-line corridor would permanently scar an enormous swath of Chile, and open rivers north of Patagonia up to dam building.
Read more (Via: The Cleanest Line)
tagged patagonia in Environment
patagonia in Environment
Reader Comments (2)
How do you propose they get power to the people of Chile?
Rory - interesting comment....
I have been seeing a lot about these dams lately in the media, and am in a moral quandary over it. Having spent a lot of tome down in Chile and being very familiar - at ground level - with these issues there are always two sides.
The side that we don't hear in the States is that we live in a power rich country - even though it has disrupted / lead to the demise some amazing runs of fish. However when we flip the switch, we get power. I wonder how many of us would feel if our power was less reliable? If places like Las Vegas did not exist and we had brown outs that disrupted our lives, computer usage, cooking, heating, etc.
Take the little villages throughout Patagonia. A few years ago many did not have power. We can romanticizes about these towns when we go to visit in Summer, swaddled in our best outdoor clothing. However we are not living there throughout the winter, without electricity and burning kerosene lamps. We also don't know what it is like to live in these farming / ranching communities, thinking that if the power company comes in we can get jobs. Just saying....
Every side has two stories. It is easy to look at the US - from the outside - and be envious of what we have done to our rivers to generate power. I hope that when people look in the see the profound sense of loss that we feel over loosing the rivers that those dams have drowned out and think carefully about their own country's future.