Patuca is the longest river of Honduras at 320kms long. When I asked Edgardo how long it might take if I travelled to visit the communities, he said it would take several days as you would go through forests and rivers as there are no roads.

In 2001, Bassi wrote about the grave social and environmental implications building the massive hydroelectric dams on Patuca River would have, and that “fortunately, the efforts of local and international groups have put the project on hold. While a positive step, this does not permanently protect the river, as the project could potentially be reinstated at any time.”

While discussions had been ongoing, this “any time’” has come; on 17 January 2011, the Honduran National Congress approved a decree for the construction of the dams Patuca II, IIA, and III, and supposedly the Ministry of Natural Resources and World Bank gave the green light saying the dam will not cause environmental damage (Honduras Weekly, 21/1/11). General Manager of state power company Enee said Patuca III’s first stage works will begin in early February 2011 and its commercial operations in 2014 (Hydroworld, 2011).
Political games with an unfeasible project

The current ‘winner’ of this ‘game’ are the semi-state Chinese company Sinohydro which has concession for the project; with the Chinese Vice-President Son Dong Sheng having said the project will need investment of around $1,000 million in September 2009, to have this answered by the Inter-American Development Bank committing $1,200 millions of finance (El Heraldo, 29/10/10). Countries like Germany is also making some form of contribution to these types of projects while hypocritically supporting projects to protect forests, when dam projects destroy the rivers and the forests the rivers feed.

Even if one could disregard the substantial harms upon the environment and communities, which is precisely what businesses do, previous players of this game dating back more than a decade show that economic gains are just as doubtful as the harms are certain.

In 1997, it was the US Texan company Panda, Olancho campesinos made declarations rejecting Patuca dam proposals and denouncing the lack on consultation in 2002 (Ahuas) and 2008 (Uhri Brus) (Ofraneh, 2010), during Zelaya’s administration, the US Harza Company withdrew (Platform for the Defense of Patuca River), and the Taiwanese semi-state company Taiwan Power declined the contract and withdrew its plans to invest $300 million (El Heraldo, 29/10/10).

The Harza Company withdrew because in 2008 Hurricane Mitch came and ruined the shores of the rivers and the company learned through this that the river was too fragile to sustain such a project (Patuca Platform).

El Heraldo (2010) states Taiwan’s decision to withdraw was based on financial crisis, but Patuca Platform confirms that it was because it undertook evaluation and was conscious of the problems with the shores, and that real production capacity of the river is only half its predicted capacity of 100 megawatts (its proponents, such as Honduras Weekly 21/1/11, continue to use original numbers, of 104 megawatts in 3 years, and 524 megawatts in 9 years), partly because the rivers do not hold water, but flows to the sea instead….continue article by Rosanna Wong here.