Power, and survival of the indigenous people
Major dam project in Canadian wilderness delayed by protests by environmentalists
Protests. Hunger strikes. Sit-ins that disrupt construction. At the immense Muskrat Falls hydroelectric dam project in a remote and rugged part of Labrador, the indigenous people who live nearby have been raising louder and louder alarms.
But it is not about the dam itself. The controversy is over what will flow from it.
The protests are focused on a mostly overlooked side effect of hydroelectric projects all over Canada: The reservoirs behind the dams tend to develop high levels of methyl mercury, leading to mercury poisoning among people who eat fish or game caught downstream.
The protesters at the Muskrat Falls dam, which is very far along in construction, finally agreed in late October to allow partial flooding of the reservoir behind it to begin. In return, the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, which owns the utility that is building the dam, promised to take steps to reduce the mercury problems, based on recommendations from an independent advisory group and independent scientists.
But Muskrat Falls will probably be just the first of a series of fights over mercury in Canada, where dams now supply about threefifths of the country’s electricity.
Other dams, same problems
The researchers whose work first raised the issue of mercury at Muskrat Falls published a recent paper, saying that similar problems loom at 22 major dams now proposed or under construction close to indigenous communities in Canada. People living there could develop toxic levels of methyl mercury, a particularly dangerous mercury compound, unless corrective steps are taken, the paper said — steps that could be time consuming and costly.
The findings in the paper, which appeared in Environmental Science and Technology, a journal of the American Chemical Society, could inflame protests already aimed at several proposed dams, including a particularly contentious project in British Columbia known as Site C, which has a projected budget of C$9.3 billion ($6.9 billion).
“I wouldn’t say hydro is bad,” said Elsie Sunderland, the lead author of the paper and a professor of public health, environmental science and engineering at Harvard. “But you need to evaluate and look at the pros and cons of any project.”
Sunderland, who has performed several studies related to Muskrat Falls, said officials were told about the mercury problem but were reluctant to grapple with it for political reasons. “We’ve been working on this for years,” she said. “I’ve done multiple briefings, and they just didn’t care.”
It has been known for dec-