The Gilgel Gibe III Dam is a 243 m (797 ft) high roller-compacted concrete dam with an associated hydroelectric power plant on the Omo River in Ethiopia.
Picture of Gibe III Dam, Ethiopia
It is located about 62 km (39 mi) west of Sodo in the South Ethiopia Regional State. The Gibe III dam is part of the Gibe cascade, a series of dams including the existing Gibe I dam (184 MW) and Gibe II power station (420 MW) as well as the planned Gibe IV (1,472 MW) and Gibe V (560 MW) dams.
Construction of the Gibe III dam began in Ethiopia in July 2006. Ten years on, it is near completion.
Overview of the Gibe III Dam
The Gibe III Dam is a hydropower project initiated by the Ethiopian government in July 2006. It is the third dam in this region, preceded by Gibe I and II. The $1.7 billion contract was given to Italian construction company Salini Impregilo.
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The dam is part of the Ethiopian project to reach an installed national capacity of 40,000 MW by 2035. A secondary purpose of this dam is to control the flow of the river in the order to allow for irrigation along the river.
The Ethiopian government initially proposed to convert surrounding land to sugarcane estates as part of the Growth and Transformation Plan, creating economic development through agricultural development.
Once fully commissioned, it will be the third largest hydroelectric plant in Africa with a power output of about 1,870 Megawatt (MW), thus more than doubling Ethiopia's total installed capacity from its 2007 level of 814 MW.
The Gilgel Gibe III Dam is 610 m-long (2,000 ft) and 243 m (797 ft) high roller-compacted concrete dam. It withholds a reservoir capacity of 14.7 km3 (3.5 cu mi) and a surface area of 210 km2 (81 sq mi), collected from a catchment area of 34,150 km2 (13,190 sq mi). The catchment area of the dam will contain 80.5% of the total basin flow.
The reservoir's live storage is 11.75 km3 (2.82 cu mi) and dead storage of 2.95 km3 (0.71 cu mi). The normal operating level of the reservoir is 892 m (2,927 ft) above sea level with a maximum of 893 m (2,930 ft) and a minimum of 800 m (2,600 ft).
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The dam's spillway is 108 m (354 ft) long and floodgate-controlled with a maximum discharge capacity of 18,000 m3/s (640,000 cu ft/s). Water above 873 m (2,864 ft) above sea level can be discharged through its gates. Feeding the dam's power house are two penstocks that each branch into five separate tunnels for each individual turbine.
The initial design of the dam foresaw a rock-fill dam.
Benefits of the Dam
The main benefit of the dam is electricity generation that is both renewable and dispatchable. It was forecast to supply about half of its power to Ethiopia and export the other half to Kenya (500 MW), Sudan (200 MW) and Djibouti (200 MW).
The electricity generated by the dam is also exported to Kenya and other countries, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue for Ethiopia.
A secondary benefit of the project is flood protection. In 2006, a flood claimed the lives of at least 360 people and thousands of livestock in the lower Omo River basin.
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Dams offer many positive economic benefits, such as control of flooding and water supply, potential for irrigation, increased navigability and reliable electrical supply.
Imprisoned Waters - The Gibe III dam, plantations, and the people of the Omo Valley, Ethiopia
Controversies and Criticisms
The project is controversial because of its environmental and social impact, the magnitude of which in itself is a subject of controversy; because of the award of the construction contract without competitive bidding; and because of an alleged lack of transparency in project affairs. For example, the environmental and social impact assessment was not published until two years after construction began.
Local and international environmental groups forecast major negative environmental and social impacts of the dam and criticized the project's environmental and social impact assessment as insufficient. Because of this and accusations that the entire approval process for the project was suspect, funding for the full construction cost was not secured, as the African Development Bank delayed a decision about a loan pending a review of the dam's environmental impact by its compliance review and mediation unit.
The assessment suggested that the project would cause minimal problems environmentally and socially. However, critics consider it to be flawed both in terms of thoroughness and objectivity.
According to critics, the dam will be potentially devastating to the indigenous population. The dam will stop the seasonal flood, which will impact the lower reach of the Omo River and Lake Turkana as well as the people who rely on these ecosystems for their livelihoods. It is estimated that more than 200,000 people rely on the Omo River below the dam for some form of subsistence such as flood recession agriculture, and many of these ethnic groups live in chronic hunger. Critics state that the Gibe III dam may worsen their situation.
Indigenous people rely on recessional cultivation of food along the riverbanks, as well as livestock herding, for survival. The Gibe III dam and the associated decrease in water levels and seasonality of flows in the Omo River threaten the continuation of the only two options for survival in this arid environment-there are no alternatives.
The people living in the project area are part of the Southern Nations of Ethiopia, a highly diverse group of people. Other sources note that, when interviewed, people in many villages have never even heard of the Gibe III dam, and many of them did not even know what a dam was. This is an indication of the failure of consultations and informed consent for the indigenous populations.
As it became known to a wider public in November 2011 through a report by the Oakland Institute, there are indeed massive plans for cotton and sugarcane plantations on 445,000 ha in the lower Omo Valley. The sugarcane plantations could be financed with aid from India, which is heavily engaged in developing Ethiopian sugar production. There are also reports about human rights violations by the Ethiopian army against locals who oppose the sugar plantations in the lower Omo Valley that would be irrigated with water from the dam's reservoir.
The decreased water flow of the Omo River resulting from the Gibe III dam will have significant impacts on the ecosystems surrounding the river. The Omo River Basin is home to the only pristine riparian forest remaining in the drylands of sub-Saharan Africa. The survival of this forest is dependent upon the seasonal flooding of the Omo River, which will cease with construction of the dam. This may cause 290 km2 of forest to "dry out" from lack of water.
The decreased water flow will also negatively impact, if not eliminate, all economic activities associated with the Omo River such as farming, fishing, and tourism.
The water level of the Omo River is crucial for recharging groundwater supplies in the Omo basin. If the water level of the river drops once the Gibe III dam is built, then it will no longer be able to refill underground water supplies, leaving much of the basin bereft of groundwater, which negatively impacts people and ecosystems.
"Humanitarian Catastrophe and Regional Armed Conflict Brewing in the Transborder Region of Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Sudan: The Proposed Gibe III Dam in Ethiopia" analyzes the full scale of impacts of the dam and charges that no environmental or social review of the full cross-border impact area has been carried out by the Ethiopian government or international development banks involved in the project, including the World Bank.
The magnitude of the impact that the dam and possible irrigation projects induced by the dam will have on the water level of Lake Turkana is controversial. Friends of Lake Turkana, a Kenyan organization representing indigenous groups in northwestern Kenya whose livelihoods are linked to Lake Turkana, had previously estimated that the dam could reduce the level of Lake Turkana by up to 10 meter affecting up to 300,000 people. This could cause the brackish water to increase in salinity to where it may no longer be drinkable by the indigenous groups around the lake.
According to dam proponents, the impact on Lake Turkana will be limited to the temporary reduction in flows during the filling of the reservoir. Various sources state that the filling could take between one and three wet seasons.
According to the International Lake Environment Committee, 90% of Lake Turkana's water is delivered by the Omo River on which the Dam would be built. With no outlet, Lake Turkana loses 2.3 meters of water every year to evaporation, and its level is sensitive to climatic and seasonal fluctuations.
It was predicted that there is about a 50-75% leakage of waters from the reservoir due to multiple fractures in the basalt at the planned reservoir site. Due to the loss of water in reservoir, the dam would not be able to produce as much electricity and less hydro power would be available to export to other nearby countries.
Moreover, the landslides would fill up the reservoir and less water can be stored.
Environmental and Social Impact Assessment
An Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) has been carried out by Centro Elettrotecnico Sperimentale Italiano (CESI) and Agriconsulting of Italy, in association with MDI Consulting Engineers from Ethiopia.
According to Anthony Mitchell, an engineer who submitted an independent feasibility study of the dam to the African Development Bank, CESI's owners include vendors who can benefit from the project and this conflict of interest is not disclosed in the impact statement.
As part of the assessment, according to the Project Company, public consultations were carried out with "officials and institutions, people affected by the project and non-governmental organizations". According to critics, these consultations have been minimal.
The Africa Resources Working Group (ARWG), a collaborative of eight consultants from around the world, conducted an independent environmental impact statement of their own for the Gibe III dam. The alternative impact statement was performed because of the alleged corruption and inaccuracy of the official impact assessment.
Regarding the flow of water into Lake Turkana, they state that the Gibe III dam will result in a 57-60% decrease of river flow volume. The ARWG also notes that it is not necessarily the volume of water that is important to the Omo River and Turkana ecosystems, but that the seasonality and timing of the water flow is crucial, because certain biota are adapted to feeding, reproducing, growing, etc. in response to seasonal changes in water flow.
Contract and Financial Aspects
The contract for the construction of the dam was awarded in 2006 to Salini Costruttori of Italy. The financial costs of the dam and hydroelectric power plant were estimated to be 1.55 billion Euro.
The cost of a transmission line from the power plant to the nearby Wolayta Sodo Substation was estimated at 35 million Euro. These costs do not include the costs of constructing or upgrading power transmission lines to Addis Abeba and onwards to Djibouti to the Northeast of the dam, to Sudan in the West and to Kenya in the South, all located at a distance between 500 and 1000 km from the dam. The cost estimate does not include the costs of extending the electricity distribution network to effectively increase access to electricity.
Impact on Indigenous Communities
The Gibe III dam sits on the Omo River, 300km southwest of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital. A designated UNESCO World Heritage site, the Lower Omo Valley is home to five national parks and over 200,000 people. Scholars predict that the dam and its associated plantations will have catastrophic effects for these citizens.
All 200,000 indigenes, spanning eight ethnic groups (the Mursi, Bodi, Kwegu, Karo, Hamer, Suri, Nyangatom and Daasanach) will be resettled. There will also be drastic repercussions for the several hundred thousand pastoralists in Kenya’s Lake Turkana basin.
The Ethiopian government has promised schools, housing, irrigation and food aid for the resettled groups, but there is little evidence of these commitments being honored.
The Gibe III project has not gone without opposition. But the Ethiopian government has done its best to silence any critics, using oppressive tactics such as beatings, arbitrary detention and arrest, rape, and murder. Anything other than outright support for the project is met with intimidation and violence.
While the Ethiopian government attempts to prevent local organizations from speaking out against harmful projects, groups like Survival International retaliate by advocating a letter-writing campaign, demanding that the Ethiopian prime minister reconsider the dam’s construction. Even the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination has become involved.
World Heritage Committee Involvement
On May 29, 2015 the World Heritage Committee (WHC), heading the monitoring of the dam, drafted a decision reaffirming its significant negative environmental impacts. The decision advocates for further discussion between the State Parties of Ethiopia and Kenya, requesting that these governments submit a Strategic Environmental Assessment by 2016 before further expansion of the dam and the Kuraz Sugar Scheme project.
The IUCN and WHC advocated for preventing further development of the proposed Gibe IV and V dam projects as well as other projects such as oil exploration, until an SEA has been produced by the state authorities.
Despite strong lobbying to declare Lake Turkana a “World Heritage Site in Danger,” the WHC failed to halt dam construction, and directed the two affected nations to raise a paltry $200,000 to mitigate negative effects. In short, the Gibe III project will proceed as scheduled.
The Ethiopian government is using the land in the Lower Omo Valley to expand a system of hydroelectric power plants that will double the country’s electricity output and supply water for industrial farming.
The Lower Omo Valley is culturally and biologically diverse and home to thousands of indigenous people. Construction of the dam will deny water to the locals who depend on Lake Turkana for survival. To complete the dam and the accompanying irrigation projects, the development plan involves forcibly removing these people from their homes.
The Oakland Institute alerts the world to the ongoing human rights abuses. This plan should consider the environmental and socio-economic impacts of all developments in the region.
Map of the Omo-Turkana Basin showing the planned extent of the Kuraz Sugar Development Project.
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