Kunene hydro to cost N$8 billion

THE proposed hydropower project on the Kunene River will cost about N$8 billion and require a construction period of five to seven years with up to 3 000 workers, who will have to be housed in a specially erected ‘construction village’ for that period, experts revealed at a public meeting on Tuesday night.

The controversial project was shelved 10 years ago, as originally it was to be built at the Epupa waterfalls, a tourism hot spot and the site of many ancestral graves of the Ovahimba people. The storage dam would have covered the falls and the entire valley with about 5 000 palm trees, which are an important resource for these nomadic people and their livestock during winter and droughts.’It is expected that the workers might want spouses and family workers to live with them and this might swell the population at that village to some 8 000 people,’ said Ernst Simon, one of the experts working on the environment and social impact assessment (ESIA).’Concerns are the possible erosion of the Ovahimba culture, increase of HIV-AIDS infections, prostitution and a breakdown of the social security system,’ Ernst added.’There is a poor likelihood that there will be jobs for Ovahimba people at the construction site,’ Simon cautioned.On the positive side, once the 580-metre-high dam wall and related infrastructure are completed and the dam is full, more tourists could be expected in the area, which could benefit the Himba people. During construction, there could be a market for the Himba to sell their cattle to the residents of the construction village, Simon pointed out.On the technical side, Project Co-ordinator John Langford of NamPower said the cost of the dam would probably come to about N$8 billion. He said this is a preliminary estimate, as negotiations continue between the Angolan and Namibian governments – which will share the costs – about which side of the river the power station should be built on, or whether two stations should be built.The favoured dam site now is at the Baynes Mountains about 40 kilometres west of Epupa. The new storage dam would be 40 kilometres long in the eastern direction and would reach as far as the Epupa falls.’The dam will end at the foot of the Epupa falls,’ Langford said in response to a question.Joseph Iita, Permanent Secretary at the Mines and Energy Ministry, made it clear that the decision to build the dam has not been made yet.’No decision about the project has been taken, nor will a decision be taken until all results of the studies are available,’ Iita said.The impact assessments will be completed in February 2010. A group of five Ovahimba traditional leaders from the Kunene River area also attended the Tuesday meeting together with their lawyer Andrew Corbett, who represented them a decade ago when the Ovahimba made it clear they were against the construction of any dam in their area.The next public hearing on the project will take place at Opuwo on June 15, while the third meeting on Namibian soil will be at Epupa from June 26 to 27, starting at 09h00.Three public hearings will be held in Angola at Tombwa and Iona on June 16 and 24 respectively. Another one will be in Luanda on Thursday, June 4.