Storm of opposition rising over Fortis’ Central Hudson bid

Town officials in New Paltz say they’ve been caught up in red tape and slowed down by Central Hudson in setting up a municipal solar array at the town landfill. Board members said they couldn’t imagine a Canadian company would be more responsive. Rodriguez agreed. “If you want to see more solar, this is a bad deal,” he said.

New Paltz’s resolution included language asking the PSC be aware of New Paltz-specific local issues such as keeping connection fees affordable to further the town’s ability to build a municipal solar array, and the flooding of the Wallkill River currently associated with the Dashville dam in Rifton.

Mike Townshend

Dammed up in Belize

When Fortis, which had a 70 percent stake in Belize Electric Company (BEC), proposed to build the Chalillo Dam in the deep rain forest of the Macal River valley in the Central American nation, it promised lower electric rates, since Belize would no longer have to buy its power from neighboring Mexico. Instead, after the dam went on-line in 2006, electrical rates went up 10 percent and were the highest in Central America, according to Probe International, a Canadian-based environmental advocacy group. And the company continued to purchase gas-fired power from Mexico.

Building the dam, which had been fought by an international coalition of environmentalists, destroyed a pristine rainforest preserve. Described as “one of the most biologically diverse regions remaining in Central America” by the British Natural History Museum, the area had been home to jaguars, tapirs, crocodiles, scarlet macaws and other endangered animals and birds, some of which may possibly have been permanently wiped out by the dam.

People are also hurting: the Macal River and other waterways downstream became polluted with heavy sediment, causing rashes and other ailments in residents along the river. Authorities have warned people not to eat the fish due to mercury contamination. The pollution was so bad Belize officials discussed shutting the dam down, “forcing it to pump water over the spillway instead of passing water through its lower level outlet or through the powerhouse which generates nearly 4 megawatts of power,” according to Probe International.

There are also fears the dam could collapse, inundating down-river communities. The initial feasibility study, secretly funded at taxpayer expense by a Canadian foreign aid organization, falsely claimed the underlying rock was granite, rather than the actual far less stable sandstones and shales. Furthermore, it failed to identify the many faults that riddle the area. In 2008, a Belizean court ordered the government to monitor water quality and set up a warning system to protect residents downstream in case of a dam break.

Cost overrides for the $24 million dam were $9 million, an expense Fortis foisted onto ratepayers, who were being charged twice the amount for electrical power paid by neighboring countries, according to Probe International. BEC continued to see a return on investment of 12 percent, until the Belize Utilities Commission forced the company to reduce the ROI to 10 percent. “Fortis was assessed a return on investment from captive rate payers regardless of the dam’s performance or the company’s popularity,” according to Probe International.

In June 2011, the Belize government seized the assets of BEC. Fortis claimed “its 70 percent interest in the company represented less than 2 percent of the company’s total assets of C$12.9 billion ($13.3 billion) as of March 31, 2011,” according to Bloomberg News. Bloomberg reported that the government took over the company because it was concerned about possible blackouts due to BEC’s insolvency, which dated back to its failure to get permission from the government for yet another rate increase.

Donna Hynes, Fortis’ manager of investor and public relations, said Fortis “has a very strong environmental track record throughout our companies” — most of which are utilities located in Canada — and noted the dam was supported by the “democratically elected government of Belize. There were eight environmental cases over the course of a series of years, all of which supported the project.” She also said the dam resulted in “significant positives for the ratepayers of Belize, one being the cost of electricity. Energy sourced from hydro is significantly more economical than from oil,” which the country had previously been dependent on. Without the dam, the cost of electricity would have been even higher, she said.

Fortis continues to own the company that operates the Chalillo dam and two other hydroelectric plants, under a 50-year operating agreement. To read more about the Chalillo dam, visit probeinternational.org (type in Fortis Belize in the search box). There is also a book chronicling a Belize animal lover’s fight to stop the dam and save the scarlet macaw, entitled The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman’s Fight to Save the World’s Most Beautiful Bird, by Bruce Barcott.

Lynn Woods