Two Hydroelectric Plants Begin

User Rating: / 0
PoorBest 

Two hydroelectric plants have begun here, one to build the largest power generation facility in Central America. The $1.2 billion Reventazon River dam will produce 311 megawatts when completed in 2016.

The Chucas Plant, a more modest 50 megawatt facility on the Tarcoles River between San Jose and Alajuela provinces, is scheduled to be completed in 2013 by Italian firm Enel Green Power, which already runs a wind power plant producing 24 megawatts of electricity here.

The Monterrey, Mexico-based CEMEX cement company as received a contract from ICE, the country’s electrical monopoly, as primary concrete supplier for 50,000 tons of special material for the dam. Specifications are stringent: low heat hydration, high workability and excellent durability.

CEMEX has a weighty presence in Central America’s construction scene with plants in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Panama.

The Chucas plant will generate 219 million kilowatts per year, enough electricity to provide the needs of 91,000 homes.

The Reventazon project is a controversial one, since it will drown one of the world’s finest white water rafting and most scenic nature tourism areas in the world. Opposition of naturalists and tourism operators, as with the Hell’s Canyon dams in Idaho (United States) was ignored by government and by the power company ICE.

The dam on the Reventazon River is scheduled to come on line in 2016 to produce 630 megawatts of electricity. ICE has already invested $80 million in preparing the site. Earlier this year, the English-language publication The Tico Times ran a story about the controversy.

An indigenous group living in the area where the national power company, ICE' intends to build the Diquis dam has filed suit against the company, claiming that ICE did not secure residents' permission to inundate tribal lands.