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Outside Magazine May 2003

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Last Flight Out (cont.)

"YES, THERE ARE FAULTS. Any rock has faults. But Belize is not in an active earthquake zone," declares Joseph Sukhnandan, the point man on the Chalillo Project, as we sit in his air-conditioned office at BEL's headquarters in Belize City. "If we were, how could all the Mayan structures remain standing?"

This may fly in the face of what seismologists have to say about Belize, but that's Sukhnandan's story and he's sticking with it. In fact, the more opportunities I give him to respond to Holland's assertions about cracks in BEL's dam plan, the more he seems to wish these questions would just go away. To the power planners at BEL, Chalillo was supposed to be a slam dunk. Dams have fallen out of favor in developed countries as scientists have documented their devastating effects on fish and the ecosystems of entire watersheds, but they're still big business in the Third World. Of course, compared with projects like China's Three Gorges Dam and India's Sardar Sarovar Project, Chalillo is barely a blip on the radar.

What irks Sukhnandan, a 38-year-old engineer who was born and raised in Guyana, is the way BEL has been crowned with a black hat. "We have had a series of people who call themselves 'experts' come and tell us they know better than us how to meet the electricity demand," he says. "It is a travesty! If we were to choose a site purely in terms of engineering and power-producing purposes, we would have gone upriver. But a dam upriver would have caused greater flooding in the Raspaculo," where the threatened keel-billed motmot, a bright-green songbird, nests. "We tried to balance power demands with environmental concerns."

Ten years ago, most of Belize's electricity came from ancient diesel generators that spewed greenhouse gases and carcinogenic particulates into the air. But by reconfiguring its system to include hydropower and cleaner-burning natural gas from Mexico, BEL has cut its diesel generation by more than half while doubling the amount of electricity it delivers. The problem is that Belize's power demand grows 10 to 15 percent each year; the world average is 2 to 3 percent. "We have to meet that demand using some source," says Sukhnandan. "Our choices are diesel, hydro, or buying from Mexico."

Waving a red pen in front of a dry-erase board next to his desk, Sukhnandan lays out BEL's position. He draws a map of Belize on the board and lectures me about the power grid. His exasperation is palpable. Several times he stops to bark, "Are you understanding this?!"

Chalillo's opponents point to untapped power sources like bagasse—the stalk refuse from sugarcane—as an alternative to the dam. Belize's cane growers are developing power plants that burn bagasse, producing enough energy to make sugar and put surplus megawatts back into BEL's grid. I ask Sukhnandan about this.

"Do we need bagasse?" he responds. "Yes. Bagasse adds 15 megawatts to our capacity. That will take us to the year 2006. You still have to have something else! I mean, come on. Unless somebody's not understanding English here."

I nod emphatically: Yes, yes. Go on.

"The physical limit of bagasse in Belize is 15 megawatts. There are only so many cane farms. Bagasse cannot give more. This is the point we've been painstakingly trying to make!!"

So the country needs a new power source. Point taken. But what about the crumbly bits of sandstone that Holland found at the proposed dam site?

"It turns out that the rock's name may not be granite, but its characteristics are identical to that of granite," Sukhnandan says. "Its chemical composition, its texture, its bearing strength—all are identical to granite. But it might technically be a sandstone. The reason for that is a long explanation that we don't have the time for."

There endeth the lesson. But Sukhnandan's curt dismissals seemed dubious. I asked around. "In general, you can build a dam on just about any foundation, as long as you have a thorough knowledge of the geology," says Larry Stephens, executive director of the U.S. Society on Dams. And an active fault line doesn't necessarily damn a dam, as long as it's taken into account. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently completed the Seven Oaks Dam, which is situated between the north and south branches of the San Andreas Fault on California's Santa Ana River and was designed to sustain up to four feet of displacement in the event of an earthquake.

Upshot: A solid dam could be built at Chalillo, provided the builders have a thorough knowledge of the bedrock.

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