Congo dreams of world's biggest hydroelectric dam

By Ulrike Koltermann Dec 8, 2006, 3:14 GMT

Inga - In the darkness, majestic and sombre, the Inga hydropower station resembles the Colosseum.

But Rome's ancient arena is just 50 metres high, ten fewer than the facility in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Inga's walls hold back huge amounts of water diverted from the Congo, Africa's largest river in terms of watershed and second-longest after the Nile.

Some of the water roars down penstocks with diametres of more than five metres into the powerhouse, where turbines with rotors weighing 250 tons convert the water power into electricity.

The Congolese government and foreign investors are dreaming of damming the entire Congo River and supplying all of Africa with the electricity that it generates.

Environmentalists, meanwhile, fear that the 50-billion-dollar project would have drastic ecological and social consequences.

Currently, the hydropower station consists of two large dams - Inga I and Inga II, Inga being a nearby village - not far from Matadi. The port city lies some 400 kilometres southwest of Kinshasa, the capital, and about 100 kilometres from the Congo's mouth on the Atlantic Ocean.

The Kinshasa-Matadi road is one of the few that are paved in the country which is the size of Western Europe.

Inga I and Inga II block a relatively small channel of the Congo, which is so broad at this spot that the river's bank and direction of its flow are difficult to discern. Here it looks more like a huge flood plain.

Numerous rocky islands, covered with trees and bushes, protrude from yellow-brown water that bubbles and foams at the countless rapids. Inga I was built in the early 1970s, Inga II in the early 1980s.

Both date from the rule of megalomaniac Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. They were designed to generate 1,775 megawatts of electricity together.

However, the facilities were not properly maintained during the civil war that ravaged the country in the late 1990s. The reservoir badly needs to be dredged and the turbines freed from silt.

Electricity generation is currently a little under 700 megawatts. That is more than the country needs because only about 6 per cent of the population has access to the power grid.

In many rural areas, cooking is done on open fires or with gas. Petroleum lamps provide light. People who can afford it have a diesel generator. Even in Kinshasa, power outages are so common that the rattling of power generators is a familiar sound.

Electricity that has no takers at home is exported to the Congo Republic, Zimbabwe and Angola.

Just eight of the Inga station's 14 turbines are now in operation. The Stuttgart-based engineering concern Fichtner has drawn up a 550- million-dollar renovation plan, co-funded by the World Bank, for SNEL, the national electricity company.

MagEnergy of Canada has begun repairs on four turbines. It is funding the work itself and will share in revenues from the station's electricity sales. This is the method eyed by foreign investors to obtain large quantities of cheap power in the future.

One of the biggest is the energy company Eskom in electricity- hungry South Africa. Its chairman, Reuel Khoza, last February presented plans to make the Inga site the world's largest hydropower station, saying the dams could advance Africa's industrialization.

The first step would be to divert a channel from the existing reservoir to a new dam, Inga III, with up to nine turbines and an output of 3,500 megawatts.

Later, a dam called Grand Inga would be built across the entire Congo River to divert the flow into a dry neighbouring valley. Fifty- two turbines would generate up to 39,000 megawatts, more than twice the production of China's controversial Three Gorges Dam.

Many see the plan as Mobutu-style megalomania. Planners do not have electricity for African villagers in mind. About 90 per cent of Africans lack access to the power grid, and new dams will do little to change that.

Rather, the electricity is needed to extract and process raw materials, and for other energy-intensive industries. Electricity companies from DRC, Angola, Namibia, Botswana and South Africa have already joined forces to build Inga III.

Together, they plan to finance the new dam as well as a transmission line to the southern tip of the continent. Each country is to receive a fifth of the electricity that is generated.

While this arrangement solves the DRC's problem of paying for Inga III's construction, it also deprives it of sole control over electricity sales. As a recent editorial in a Congolese newspaper put it: 'The whole world is taking part in Inga, but DRC has all the disadvantages.'

Several villages would have to make way for the new dam. Crispin Lumbobob, a consultant hired by SNEL to look into the ecological and social impact of Inga III and Grand Inga, said it was unclear how many people would be affected.

He noted that many villages were already half empty because inhabitants had fled the area's aggressive mosquitoes and other insects.

Environmental groups like the California-based International Rivers Network warn of dangers posed by the massive hydroelectric project. They say it would threaten the Congo River's flora and fauna and could cause malaria-carrying mosquitoes and other pests to multiply drastically.

Fish would not be able to reach their spawning grounds, inundated plants would decompose and release harmful gases, and fertilisation of surrounding soil by mineral-rich river silt would stop.

On top of the natural risks is a large man-made one: DRC is among the world's most corrupt countries.