PENANG, Malaysia, Oct 10 (AWW) -  Even before the problem-ridden Bakun Dam in Malaysia’s Sarawak state can be completed, officials are talking of plans to build two more hydroelectric dams there -- one of which could make Bakun look puny by comparison.

   Meanwhile, concerns over the necessity for such dams, how the surplus electricity will be used, the resettlement of indigenous people, and the ‘development’ of catchment areas appear to be going unheeded.

   The turbines powering the 2,400 MW Bakun Dam along 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 industrialised Malaysian peninsula via submarine cables laid on the bed of the South China Sea?

   The former option would require the participation of major transnational corporations with what critics say are questionable benefits for the rural economy of Sarawak. The option to lay cables, on the other hand, would be expensive and fraught with technical uncertainties.

   ‘‘Transmission loss and maintenance works in the future will continue to pose technical and financial challenges to the project proponents,’’ S M Mohamed Idris, president of the environmental group Friends of the Earth, Malaysia (SAM) , said 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 and resulted in enormous losses. ‘‘This shows the vulnerability of the underwater eco-system surrounding the Indonesian and Malaysian waters,’’ he warned.

   Even as officials pore over their feasibility papers, the Sarawak Enterprise Corp Bhd (SECB) said in July that it would build a 1,000-megawatt dam in Murum in the upper Rejang Basin of central Sarawak, once it can confirm buyers for the power and determine the pricing.

   That is not all. Officials are now dreaming of an enormous 20,000-mw hydroelectric dam along the Rejang River. They want the power from this dam transmitted via submarine cables to the more densely populated peninsula.

The cost of the cables alone for this mammoth dam would be staggering. ‘‘It would cost 3.5 billion ringgit (0.9 billion US dollars) per cable that can carry 800 mw. But this (laying of the cables) is over the next 15 to 20 years,’’ Energy Minister Dr Lim Keng Yaik was quoted as saying.

   Sarawak consumes only 750 mw now and 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 neighbouring Sabah state in north Borneo have comfortable reserve margins for now.

   Across the South China Sea, the more industrialised peninsular Malaysia has an even bigger reserve margin. Its electricity generation capacity has been rising as well. In justifying the need for another huge dam when the reserve margin is now more than 40 percent, Lim said that margin would be used up completely in 10 years.

CONTROVERSIES GALORE

   The Bakun Dam, now three quarters complete, has been jinxed from the start.

   Twice shelved, plagued by delays and contract disputes, the project has seen companies such as Ekran Bhd and Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) 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 in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

   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 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 labourers in plantations.

   ‘‘It’s a disaster,’’ said a researcher based in the Sarawak capital, Kuching, 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 paddy. 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 added.

   In September, a delegation by the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia visited Sungai Asap and found shoddy housing, poor drainage and roads, some delays and disputes in the compensation payment, 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 at 205 metres high, will be the ‘‘second highest rockfill dam in the world next to the Shibuya Dam in China’’. It will submerge an area the size of Singapore, making the loss of virgin rainforest and swidden agricultural land complete.

   Yet in August, China’s state-run Xinhua news Agency published a ‘China Daily’ 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.

CATCHMENT ‘DEVELOPMENT’

   But the big story is not about the dam and the power coming from it, but what is happening with the catchment area, claims another Sarawak-based researcher familiar with the interior of the state. ‘‘Basically, they are allowing all kinds of developments 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 the told Asia Water Wire: ‘‘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 ‘re-forestation’—in an area which was primary forest a dozen years ago’’. Similarly, in Ulu Balui, the logged Bahau-Balui area has been licensed out 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.

   But more dams are in the pipeline despite these uncertainties. ‘‘They want these projects because they are all construction projects. They will not do the work themselves but subcontract them to some other company,’’ says political scientist Andrew Aeria, who has done research into 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 (real or thorough) examination of the cost-efficiency of the projects vis-à-vis alternative sources of power, especially renewable sources,’’ he added. (END/IPS/AWW/AN/JS/06)