Patagonia Dams - Horseback Protest in Chile

We had just landed after a 45 minuete flight on LAN Chile from Puerto Montt at the Balmaceda airport outside of the city of Coyhaique in the Patagonia. We were riding in an airport shuttle to central Coyhaique when we came around a bend to find a police cars following a long line of horses. This was the Patagonia sin Represas horseback protest that has been making its way across the Patagonia for several weeks in an attempt to draw national and international attention to the proposed Dams that will be built in Southern Chile.

Endesa Power in South America
The plan in the works by the Endesa Power company from Spain and other companies is to dam rivers across Southern Chile, and then send the power all the way across Chile thousands of miles to Santiago. In theory, this sounds like it might help Chile solve the electrical and energy problems that Chile is facing. In reality, this will be some of the most costly, inefficient, and environmentally destructive energy per KW that could possibly be produced in Chile. There is a very real possibility that this energy is just as likly to go to Argentina as to Santiago once the dams are complete.

Patagonia to Santiago
We have spoken with experts on energy production that believe to send this much energy across Chile will result in a significan loss of electricity in the process of transmissions that will nearly neutralize any cost benefits to zero by the time it reaches Santiago and the Central Regions of Chile.  The other obvious problem still to be solved is how to get the electricity there. There are currently no transmission lines, or even roads to build transmission lines from the deep Patagonia to even the more populated parts of Southern Chile such as Puerto Montt or Temuco. This is the second environmental disaster created by the current president of Michelle Bachelet in regards to the Patagonia hydro dam projects, as her administration has also allocated funds for the construction of a road across Douglas Tompkin's Pumalin Park causing unrecoverable damage to some of rarest species of flora and fauna left in South America.

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