Dam Conference

In the spirit of the new and vibrant politics in El Salvador, a few students from my language school attended a half-day conference on the El Chapparal dam, which is being built on the Torola river in northern El Salvador. This is a controversial project which in many ways encapsulates the political upheaval that is underway. It is a complicated issue, covering the application of eminent domain versus human rights, concern over the country’s energy deficit, and arguments about environmental protection. And it is a fount for the populist outrage that accumulated under corrupt and uninterrupted 20 year one-party rule, as the deal was negotiated by the previous government.

Attendees listen to a speaker

Many participants traveled from afar to attend the event in San Salvador

The blog at Voices on the Border provides a description of the project:
Despite controversy over environmental destruction of surrounding communities, the Comisión Ejecutiva del Río Lempa (CEL) in El Salvador has began constructing a new hydroelectric dam in the Río Torola located in the northern part of the department of San Miguel in an area known as El Chaparral.


Proponents of the project say that the dam is in accordance with the Kyoto Protocol and has the potential to provide electricity to two hundred thousand families in El Salvador. Other touted benefits would include new economic opportunities in agriculture, fishing, and tourism.


However, there is great contention about the benefits of this project due to the resulting flooding of current communities. Contractors and government officials assure that those individuals who lose their land will be compensated and provided a place to live, but according to parish priest, José Antonio Confesor, of the community of San Antonio del Mosco, the majority of the local population does not agree with the construction. Others living in the affected areas say that they were deceived by CEL concerning the purchase of lands.


The project is being financed by a loan from the Banco Centroamericano de Integración Económica (BCIE) for 163 million dollars and by the government that has contributed 56 million dollars.

From the reports I have received and from what I heard at the conference, people in the affected region were intimidated by the government to sell their lands and were not fairly compensated. It seems there was a lack of transparency, which coupled with the intimidation left people feeling pretty helpless. The new government made the dossier on the dam public, which sparked further outrage as the general public has gotten a better sense of the terms of the project and how it will affect the surrounding areas, and how much energy it will actually generate. The issue is made more complicated for the following reasons:

1. The previous government signed a contract, which if violated would lead to a penalty greater than the full cost of the dam. 
2. The father of the head of the CEL is one of President Funes’ most important supporters.
   

The dam’s construction has been blocked for the moment by vigorous protests in the affected villages, along with support from prominent intellectuals and advocates.  This was the purpose of the conference we attended – to allow the aggrieved to air their complaints and to show a unified front against the project.  

It is hard for me to get a good grasp on the complexity of the issue, just having arrived, but it is an interesting case study in economic development and seems to be reflective of the way the country was governed over the last 20 years - without consideration of the opinions and needed of the vast majority of El Salvadorans.  It actually reminds me a lot of a case study we read at SOM on the privatization of Cochabamba, Bolivia's water supply, which really did have a terrible impact on low-income Bolivians.  It will be interesting to see if average El Salvadorans will be able to flex the same muscle as the Bolivians did, who were successful in getting the Bechtel contract canceled. 

A man who lost his land speaks to the media