Posted on 08/01/2011 7:33:07 PM PDT by _a_0_0_
The United Nations has come out in support of critics of Ethiopia's massive Gibe III hydropower project, calling for work to be suspended until the negative impacts of the dam can be assessed.
The UN World Heritage Committee, which establishes sites to be listed as being of special cultural or physical significance, said the Gibe III dam's construction endangered the existence of Lake Turkana, the largest desert lake in the world.
In 1997 Lake Turkana, which straddles the Kenya-Ethiopian border, was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Gibe III dam is being built by Italy’s Salini Construction company, and a Chinese state-owned bank has approved funding for the project, Kenya's The Daily Nation newspaper reported.
Both Ethiopia and China, as members of the World Heritage Committee, were asked to fulfill their responsibilities for the protection of the site.
Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi defended the decision to expand dam projects and scathingly denounced the project’s critics, saying, "The views of western critics are ironic as Ethiopian facilities are infinitely more environmentally and socially responsible than the projects in their countries, past and present," adding that those who were advocating against hydropower electricity generation were condemning Africa and its people to remain in extreme poverty before concluding, "They are concerned about butterflies' lives, but not human diseases."
Lake Turkana is one of those desert lakes with no outlet. Think of the Dead Sea or the Great Salt Lake. The Omo River from Ethiopia flows into the northern end of the lake and supplies about 85% of the lake’s water while the Kerio and Turkwel flow into the southern end and supply about 10%. THe remainder is from small streams and rainfall.
When I lived in Kenya I remember Ferguson’s Gulf, on the western shore about 1/3 up the length of the lake, dried up due to lack of rainfall in the lake’s drainage basin.
Here is further info.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/59313287/Turkana-Project-R-Banut
It's not physically possible. All the water that comes into the hydro plant leaves the plant. What would they do with so much extra water otherwise?
The hydro plant simply collects some of the potential energy of the water. River sources are high, river deltas are low - that's why the water flows. Water is heavy. There is plenty of energy in all that water that it loses as it descends. That energy converts into heat, essentially, and heat is the last thing you want in a desert lake (it facilitates evaporation.)
A dam collects some of the water, allowing it to gather and rise back to some level. Then the water is taken from upper levels of the dam and fed downstream through a turbine which cools the water and produces electric energy. The amount of water in front of the dam is fixed and never changes; it amounts to a one-time borrowing of water when the plant opens. The water is still there, though, and can be released back into the lake whenever desired (if the dam is strong enough.)
Aral Sea is drying up because the water from rivers that feed it was taken away for irrigation purposes. That water was physically removed, not just allowed to pool up. That's a big difference.
I read her book (Silent Spring) In 1960. I was in the 6th grade. I believed it. As an adult I realized it was mostly lies.
Heaven forbid if those poor black people in the third world get to enjoy the benefits of electricity and the modern world! /sarc
So this dam is exclusively for power generation, not irrigation?
I used to yell at my Rachel Carson loving friends. Malaria was almost eradicated. Now, WHO reports 250 million malaria and 1 million deaths. The deaths are mainly kids and pregnant women. I don’t know what year they stopped using DDT but say since 1965 that’d be over 50 million. She was one evil woman. But at least the birdies sing now.
Welcome to white western liberals, chief. Didn't you know Paul Ehrlich was a butterfly chaser before he went for the money as a gloom'n'doomer?
That's what all the available information tells us... Besides, you don't need a dam for irrigation, you just need canals. Irrigation with water of high pressure is impossible anyway; you must deliver the water in pipes made out of quality steel, and once it is delivered it will fountain hundreds of feet into the sky and can cut a man in half. Imagine what it will do to the soil...
Once the reservoir is filled, they can then release the same amount of water as that flowing into it....meaning no loss.
Christians too. Why let them have clean water?
This situation is quite a bit different from that at Klamath Falls, but I thought you would still be interested.
Kenya just announced that they are going to immediately put 10000 hectares of land in the River Omo delta around Lake Turkana under irrigation. The suits in NYC should butt out.
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