In Malaysia, dams for the boys
By Anil Netto
KUALA LUMPUR - Even before the problem-ridden Bakun Dam in eastern Sarawak state is completed, Malaysian officials are tabling plans to build two more hydroelectric dams in the area, one of which would make Bakun look puny by comparison.
Questions about the necessity for such dams, how the surplus electricity will be used, the resettlement of indigenous people, and the development of controversial catchment areas seem low on
 the list of the government's concerns.
The 2,400-megawatt turbines powered by the Bakun Dam on the
Balui River could start churning by 2009, but planners are still mulling over what to do with all that excess electricity. Should they approve a power-guzzling - and extremely polluting - aluminum smelter plant in Sarawak? Or should they channel the excess power to the more industrialized peninsular (West) Malaysia via submarine cables laid under the South China Sea?
The former option would require the participation of major transnational corporations, with questionable benefits for the rural economy of Sarawak. The option to lay cables, on the other hand, would be expensive and is fraught with technical uncertainties.
"Transmission loss and maintenance in the future will continue to pose technical and financial challenges to the project proponents," said S M Mohamed Idris, president of the environmental group Friends of the Earth Malaysia (SAM, for Sahabat Alam Malaysia) in a statement. He added that project delays or technical problems during the cabling process would also result in budget overruns.
Moreover, the past couple of years have shown the volatile nature of tectonic-plate movements, which have caused undersea and overland earthquakes in the region, resulting in enormous losses. "This shows the vulnerability of the underwater ecosystem surrounding the Indonesian and Malaysian waters," the activist warned.
Even as officials pore over their feasibility papers, the Sarawak Enterprise Corp Bhd said in July that it would build a 1,000MW dam in Murum in the Upper Rejang Basin of central Sarawak, once it can confirm buyers for the power and determine the pricing. Officials are also conceptualizing an enormous 20,000MW hydroelectric dam along the Rejang River.
They want the power from this dam transmitted via submarine cables to the more densely populated Malay Peninsula. The cost of the cables alone for this mammoth dam would be staggering. "It would cost RM3.5 billion [US$900 million] per cable that can carry 800MW. But this [laying of the cables] is over the next 15-20 years," Energy Minister Lim Keng Yaik was quoted as saying.
Sarawak consumes only 750MW now and currently obtains its electricity from the Batang Ai Dam, built in 1975, in the Sri Aman division as well as from diesel, natural gas and coal. Both Sarawak and neighboring Sabah state in north Borneo now have comfortable reserve margins.
Across the South China Sea, the more industrialized peninsular Malaysia has an even bigger reserve margin, and its electricity-generation capacity has been rising as well. To justify the need for another huge dam when the reserve margin is now more than 40%, Lim said that margin would be used up completely in 10 years.
The Bakun Dam, now three-quarters complete, has been jinxed from the start. Twice shelved, plagued by cost overruns, delays and contract disputes, the project has seen companies such as Ekran Bhd and Asea Brown Boveri come and go, submerged under a pile of debt, losses and cost overruns. Some of these companies were compensated with taxpayers' money when the project was shelved during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.
Relocated indigenous people have been disgruntled about the relocation site and the land allotted to them in Sungai Asap in the Belaga district, Kapit. Mostly subsistence farmers, many of them would have preferred to maintain their autonomy as shifting cultivators rather than expose themselves to the vagaries of the market economy through the planting of cash crops, much less toil as wage laborers in plantations.
"It's a disaster," a researcher based in the Sarawak state capital, Kuching, said of the resettlement. "Some of the houses are already rotting because the people don't want to live there. They couldn't afford to pay for the electricity, so it was cut off."
Moreover, the allotted land - 1.2 hectares each - was neither sufficient nor fertile enough for cultivating rice. Some of the resettled people, comprising ethnic groups such as the Kenyah, Kayan, Lahanan, Ukit and Penan, have gone back to living near their old villages, higher up from the dam site, he said.
Last month, a delegation from the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia visited Sungai Asap and found shoddy housing, poor drainage and roads, delays and disputes in the compensation payment, an inadequate number of health personnel, and loss of access to surrounding forest areas.
Others are concerned about the safety of the dam. The dam's lead contractor, Sime Engineering Services Bhd, claims that Bakun, which will stand 205 meters high, will be the "second-highest rock-fill dam in the world next to the Shibuya Dam in China". It will submerge an area the size of Singapore, including large areas of virgin rainforest and fertile agricultural land.
Yet in August, the Xinhua News Agency published a report on its website revealing that four Chinese state-owned enterprises, including China Sinohydro Corp, had been "downgraded" because of "safety or environmental pollution accidents". Sinohydro is one of seven firms in the Malaysia-China Hydro Joint Venture consortium working on Bakun.
But the big story isn't about the dam and the power coming from it, but what's happening with the catchment area, claims another Sarawak-based researcher familiar with the interior of the state. "Basically, they are allowing all kinds of development in the catchment, including plantation development, and have done next to nothing to protect, conserve, rehabilitate the catchment."
The Murum River joins the Balui River a short distance above Bakun; yet, he said, "the Murum catchment - including the Belepeh/Seping, Plieran and Danum river catchment - has been licensed out for plantation 'forest' - a mix of oil palm and Acacia mangium, involving clear felling of the logged-over forest, and 'reforestation' - in an area which was primary forest a dozen years ago". Similarly, in Ulu Balui, the logged Bahau-Balui area has been licensed for plantation forest.
Thus while the public is bearing the costs of the dam construction, the catchment areas are being stripped by others, he said.
With all these uncertainties, why are there more dams in the pipeline?
"They want these projects because they are all construction projects; they will not do the work themselves but subcontract them to some other company," said political scientist Andrew Aeria, who has studied the political economy of Sarawak. "They want easy money without doing any work; this is the character of politically connected businesses in Malaysia.
"You can rest assured there is no [thorough] examination of the cost-efficiency of the projects vis-a-vis alternative sources of power, especially renewable sources," he said.
|
