Dams could tame wild river
»Under a broad plane tree near Albania’s ALONG THE VJOSA RIVER border with Greece, Jorgji Ilia f ills a battered flask from one of the Vjosa River’s many springs.
“There is nothing else better than the river,” the retired schoolteacher said. “The Vjosa gives beauty to our village.”
The Vjosa is temperamental and fickle, changing from translucent cobalt blue to sludge brown to emerald green, from a steady flow to a raging torrent. Nothing holds it back for more than 170 miles in its course through the forest-covered slopes of Greece’s Pindus mountains to Albania’s Adriatic coast.
This is one of Europe’s last wild rivers. But for how long?
Albania’s government has set in motion plans to dam the Vjosa and its tributaries to generate much-needed electricity for one of Europe’s poorest countries, with the intent to build eight dams along the main river.
It’s part of a world hydropower boom, mainly in Southeast Asia, South America, Africa and less developed parts of Europe. In the Balkans alone, about 2,800 projects to tame rivers are underway or planned, says Olsi Nika of EcoAlbania, a nonprofit that opposes the projects.
Some tout hydropower as a reliable, cheap and renewable energy source that helps curb dependence on planet-warming fossil fuels. But some recent studies question hydropower’s value in the fight against global warming. Critics say the benefits of hydropower are overstated — and outweighed by the harm dams can do.
Rivers are a crucial part of the global water cycle. They act as nature’s arteries, carrying energy and nutrients across vast landscapes, providing water for drinking, food production and industry. They’re a means of transportation for people and goods, and a haven for boaters and anglers. Rivers are home to a diversity of fish — including tiny minnows, trout and salmon — and provide shelter and food for birds and mammals.
But dams interrupt their flow, and the life in and around them. While installing fish ladders and widening tunnels to bypass dams helps some species, it hasn’t worked in places such as the Amazon, says Julian Olden, a University of Washington ecologist.
Dams block the natural flow of water and sediment. They also can change the chemistry of the water and cause toxic algae to grow.
Those who live along the riverbank or rely on the waterway for their livelihood fear dams could kill the Vjosa as they know it. Its fragile ecosystem will be irreversibly altered, and many residents will lose their land and homes.
The government has awarded a new contract for the site to a Turkish company. Energy ministry officials rejected multiple interview requests to discuss their hydropower plans.
Many locals oppose the plans. Dozens of residents from the village of Kute joined nonprofits to file what was Albania’s first environmental lawsuit against the construction of a dam in the Pocem gorge, a short distance downriver from Kalivac. They won in 2017, but the government has appealed.
As pressure to build dams intensifies in less developed countries, the opposite is happening in the U.S. and western Europe, where there’s a movement to tear down dams considered obsolete and environmentally destructive.
More than 1,600 have been dismantled in the U.S., most within the past 30 years, according to the advocacy group American Rivers. In Europe, the largest-ever removal began this year in France, where two dams are being torn down on Normandy’s Selune River. The Vjosa also is a valuable resource for studying river behavior.
“Science is only at the beginning of understanding how biodiversity in river networks is structured and maintained,” said researcher Gabriel Singer of the LeibnizInstitute in Germany. “The Vjosa is a unique system.”