A Very Good Week for the World's Rivers and a Bad Week for Dams

By Lori Pottinger, Huffington Post. Posted November 16, 2009.

It’s been a bad week for dams – and a very good one for the world’s rivers.

In Queensland, Australia, river protectors thrilled to the news today that their long fight to Save the Mary River from the ravages of a large dam is, finally, over. The nation’s Environment Minister announced the rejection of the proposed Traveston Dam due to its ''unacceptable impacts on matters of national environment significance.''

The river-endangering dam would likely have killed off a few endangered species (including a lungfish species that has been around since the dinosaurs roamed the earth), flooded farmland, and dewatered the river for miles. The Sydney Morning Herald said, “By stopping the dam, experts said, [Peter] Garrett had made the biggest decision by an environment minister in 10 years of national environment laws.” Residents of the Mary Valley, 160 kilometres north of Brisbane, had for three years fought the dam with everything they had – from horseback protests to long-distance canoe trips to a widespread grassroots PR campaign that saw every fence post and farm building in the Mary River valley sporting signs to Save the Mary.

These dogged and inspiring activists succeeded in creating a national debate on the dam, and shone a bright spotlight on the project’s flaws. Valley residents had been on edge for three years; now, they can get on with their lives – and take immense pride in their accomplishment to save a critical watershed.

Halfway around the world, in Mexico, equally inspiring community activists have prevailed in their fight to prevent a bad dam project planned near Guadalajara, the second largest city in Mexico. In late October, the governor of Jalisco State announced the cancellation of the Arcediano Dam. The dam was expected to bring serious health risks for the three million people who would drink its water, since its source – the highly polluted Santiago River – is the recipient of large amounts of untreated domestic and industrial wastewater. In 2001, the National Water Commission called the Santiago unsuitable to supply drinking water.

It’s the second such announcement in Mexico this year; in May the Mexican press reported that another big dam – this one near Acapulco – is being postponed. Since 2004, thousands of local farmers have been fighting the construction of La Parota Dam in Guerrero state. They staged blockades, protests and legal actions, and often faced violent police repression in return.

Further south, Brazil, now on the verge of massive damming of the Amazon, may be slowing its dam boom down a bit as well. This week, a judge suspended the licensing process for Brazil’s biggest dam, the huge Belo Monte hydropower project, and ordered new public hearings on the project. Past public hearings on the contested project broke down in protests in September after it became clear the process was a sham. The judgement buys some time for activists working to raise concerns about the dam’s true costs, and its huge impacts on one of the world’s most important river systems.

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Lori Pottinger is the editor of International Rivers' quarterly publication, World Rivers Review and of the annual Dams, Rivers and People reports. She also works on International Rivers' Africa program.

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