KUALA LUMPUR - Even before the
problem-ridden Bakun Dam in eastern Sarawak state
is completed, Malaysian officials are tabling
plans to build two more hydroelectric dams in the
area, one of which would make Bakun look puny by
comparison.
Questions about the necessity
for such dams, how the surplus electricity will be
used, the resettlement of indigenous people, and
the development of controversial catchment areas
seem low on
the list of the
government's concerns.
The 2,400-megawatt
turbines powered by the Bakun Dam on the
Balui River could start
churning by 2009, but planners are still mulling
over what to do with all that excess electricity.
Should they approve a power-guzzling - and
extremely polluting - aluminum smelter plant in
Sarawak? Or should they channel the excess power
to the more industrialized peninsular (West)
Malaysia via submarine cables laid under the South
China Sea?
The former option would require
the participation of major transnational
corporations, with questionable benefits for the
rural economy of Sarawak. The option to lay
cables, on the other hand, would be expensive and
is fraught with technical uncertainties.
"Transmission loss and maintenance in the
future will continue to pose technical and
financial challenges to the project proponents,"
said S M Mohamed Idris, president of the
environmental group Friends of the Earth Malaysia
(SAM, for Sahabat Alam Malaysia) in a statement.
He added that project delays or technical problems
during the cabling process would also result in
budget overruns.
Moreover, the past couple
of years have shown the volatile nature of
tectonic-plate movements, which have caused
undersea and overland earthquakes in the region,
resulting in enormous losses. "This shows the
vulnerability of the underwater ecosystem
surrounding the Indonesian and Malaysian waters,"
the activist warned.
Even as officials
pore over their feasibility papers, the Sarawak
Enterprise Corp Bhd said in July that it would
build a 1,000MW dam in Murum in the Upper Rejang
Basin of central Sarawak, once it can confirm
buyers for the power and determine the pricing.
Officials are also conceptualizing an enormous
20,000MW hydroelectric dam along the Rejang River.
They want the power from this dam
transmitted via submarine cables to the more
densely populated Malay Peninsula. The cost of the
cables alone for this mammoth dam would be
staggering. "It would cost RM3.5 billion [US$900
million] per cable that can carry 800MW. But this
[laying of the cables] is over the next 15-20
years," Energy Minister Lim Keng Yaik was quoted
as saying.
Sarawak consumes only 750MW now
and currently obtains its electricity from the
Batang Ai Dam, built in 1975, in the Sri Aman
division as well as from diesel, natural gas and
coal. Both Sarawak and neighboring Sabah state in
north Borneo now have comfortable reserve margins.
Across the South China Sea, the more
industrialized peninsular Malaysia has an even
bigger reserve margin, and its
electricity-generation capacity has been rising as
well. To justify the need for another huge dam
when the reserve margin is now more than 40%, Lim
said that margin would be used up completely in 10
years.
The Bakun Dam, now three-quarters
complete, has been jinxed from the start. Twice
shelved, plagued by cost overruns, delays and
contract disputes, the project has seen companies
such as Ekran Bhd and Asea Brown Boveri come and
go, submerged under a pile of debt, losses and
cost overruns. Some of these companies were
compensated with taxpayers' money when the project
was shelved during the 1997-98 Asian financial
crisis.
Relocated indigenous people have
been disgruntled about the relocation site and the
land allotted to them in Sungai Asap in the Belaga
district, Kapit. Mostly subsistence farmers, many
of them would have preferred to maintain their
autonomy as shifting cultivators rather than
expose themselves to the vagaries of the market
economy through the planting of cash crops, much
less toil as wage laborers in plantations.
"It's a disaster," a researcher based in
the Sarawak state capital, Kuching, said of the
resettlement. "Some of the houses are already
rotting because the people don't want to live
there. They couldn't afford to pay for the
electricity, so it was cut off."
Moreover,
the allotted land - 1.2 hectares each - was
neither sufficient nor fertile enough for
cultivating rice. Some of the resettled people,
comprising ethnic groups such as the Kenyah,
Kayan, Lahanan, Ukit and Penan, have gone back to
living near their old villages, higher up from the
dam site, he said.
Last month, a
delegation from the Human Rights Commission of
Malaysia visited Sungai Asap and found shoddy
housing, poor drainage and roads, delays and
disputes in the compensation payment, an
inadequate number of health personnel, and loss of
access to surrounding forest areas.
Others
are concerned about the safety of the dam. The
dam's lead contractor, Sime Engineering Services
Bhd, claims that Bakun, which will stand 205
meters high, will be the "second-highest rock-fill
dam in the world next to the Shibuya Dam in
China". It will submerge an area the size of
Singapore, including large areas of virgin
rainforest and fertile agricultural land.
Yet in August, the Xinhua News Agency
published a report on its website revealing that
four Chinese state-owned enterprises, including
China Sinohydro Corp, had been "downgraded"
because of "safety or environmental pollution
accidents". Sinohydro is one of seven firms in the
Malaysia-China Hydro Joint Venture consortium
working on Bakun.
But the big story isn't
about the dam and the power coming from it, but
what's happening with the catchment area, claims
another Sarawak-based researcher familiar with the
interior of the state. "Basically, they are
allowing all kinds of development in the
catchment, including plantation development, and
have done next to nothing to protect, conserve,
rehabilitate the catchment."
The Murum
River joins the Balui River a short distance above
Bakun; yet, he said, "the Murum catchment -
including the Belepeh/Seping, Plieran and Danum
river catchment - has been licensed out for
plantation 'forest' - a mix of oil palm and
Acacia mangium, involving clear felling of
the logged-over forest, and 'reforestation' - in
an area which was primary forest a dozen years
ago". Similarly, in Ulu Balui, the logged
Bahau-Balui area has been licensed for plantation
forest.
Thus while the public is bearing
the costs of the dam construction, the catchment
areas are being stripped by others, he said.
With all these uncertainties, why are
there more dams in the pipeline?
"They
want these projects because they are all
construction projects; they will not do the work
themselves but subcontract them to some other
company," said political scientist Andrew Aeria,
who has studied the political economy of Sarawak.
"They want easy money without doing any work; this
is the character of politically connected
businesses in Malaysia.
"You can rest
assured there is no [thorough] examination of the
cost-efficiency of the projects vis-a-vis
alternative sources of power, especially renewable
sources," he said.
