Brazilian dam would put Peruvian jungle under water

Milagros Salazar in IPS via Tierramérica: Seen from up high, the route to Puente Inambari looks like a green serpent -- long, robust and sinuous. The Amazon jungle that dominates this landscape will be underwater if one of the largest hydroelectric dams in Peru (and all Latin America) is built.

At Puente Inambari, the regions of Puno, Cuzco and Madre de Dios converge, in southeast Peru. Some 70 villages in these regions would have to be relocated if the Peruvian government approves the definitive concession to EGASUR (Southern Amazon Electrical Generation Company), based on Brazilian capital, to build a hydroelectric plant and create a reservoir covering 37,800 hectares, according to the company's feasibility study.

Thirty-two towns in Puno, 28 in Cuzco and 10 in Madre de Dios would be displaced by the Inambari project, located between the Amazon jungle plain and the Andes mountains covered by cloud forest that extends into the buffer zone of the Bajuaja-Sonene National Park, rich in plant and animal wildlife.

That calculation is part of an investigation by engineer Rosario Linares, of Civil Society for the Construction of the Puno Trans-Oceanic Highway, who says in that region alone the project would affect 10,000 people. EGASUR maintains that the totals are lower.

Inambari is one of the five hydroelectric dams planned as part of the accord signed Jun. 16 by Peru and Brazil for the generation of 6,000 megawatts of electricity. On Aug. 24, Peruvian President Alan García presented an energy and irrigation proposal, to be sourced at the Marañón River, to Brazilian business leaders…

Puerto Carlos on the Rio Inambari, shot by Roar Johansen, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license