14. 3 Anticipated effects of a large dam
The various purposes that such a project could serve
The various options in size and technology
The social and ecological impacts
14. 4 Norwegian involvement
14. 5 PANGANI
14. 6 TIED AID
14. 7 WATER AVAILABILITY
14. 8 CRITICISM OF PANGANI
COMPANIES AND INSTITUTIONS INVOLVED IN THE PANGANI PROJECT
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In this chapter, Tanzania is presented as an example of the international involvement of Norwegian hydropower developers.
The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) has chosen Tanzania as one of its main recipient countries, and no other country has received more development assistance from Norway. Even though Tanzania is one of the world's poorest countries, it represents a significant export market for Norwegian companies. During the 1980s, Norwegian companies exported goods worth 820 million Norwegian kroner (128 million US dollars). In addition, services provided by Norwegian consultants and contractors amounted to several hundred million Norwegian kroner. This export has to a large degree been financed by Norwegian development aid (Amland, 1993). Several Norwegian hydropower companies are presently involved in projects in Tanzania.
The consulting company Norplan is at the moment working on the Pangani Falls Redevelopment Project, collaborating with Finnish IVO International (see 14.5). Norplan has been hired as consultants for the rehabilitation of the older dams on the Pangani river, and has done substantial work on the so-called master plans for development of river systems in Tanzania.
Norplan is also doing consultancy work on the Kihansi hydropower plant in central Tanzania, which is partly financed by the World Bank. Kihansi is the largest hydropower project in the country, and according to plans it will be put into operation by 1998. The dam on the Kihansi River will produce 180 MW of electricity, with a possible increase to 300 MW in a later phase. The costs are estimated to some 2.6 billion Norwegian kroner (400 million US dollars). NORAD has promised 400 million Norwegian kroner (62 million US dollars) in development support to the project, on the condition that environmental concerns are properly taken care of. In addition to the World Bank financed feasibility study, Norplan has also made the environmental assessments on the project, which have been far from satisfactory. As construction of the dam had already started when the environmental studies were commissioned, the studies are nothing but a rush job to assess the amount of damage made by this huge project.
The Norwegian company Norconsult International is doing engineering work and detailed design of the Kihansi dam. Norconsult has also made feasibility studies for several other dam projects in Tanzania, and has been involved in the Rufiji Basin Master Plan.
Noremco is the contractor on the Pangani Falls Redevelopment Project, and have also done some work for local authorities in Tanzania.
Kvaerner Energy and ABB have had large deliveries of equipment to hydropower projects in Tanzania. Both have their own agents in the country. ABB is a co-owner of the TANELEC factory in Tanzania, which produces smaller transformers for use in power stations and grids.
The remainder of this chapter presents two Tanzanian hydropower projects in which Norwegian companies are or have been involved. First the gigantic Stiegler's Gorge project, which was planned on the Rufiji river, is discussed. This part of the chapter is taken from the 1988 FIVAS report Når Norge Legger Verden i Rør. It was written by Dr. Ian Bryceson, a Tanzanian marine biologist who worked at the University of Dar es Salaam from 1972 to 1982, and was involved in studying the anticipated effects of the dam.
Finally, we discuss the Pangani project, which is presently under construction. Pangani is the largest NORAD project so far. After several years of economic crisis in Tanzania, Pangani represents new hopes and new contracts for the hydropower industry.
14. 2 STIEGLER'S GORGE
This chapter describes how Norwegian hydropower interests were involved in the planning of a large dam at Stiegler's Gorge on the Rufiji River in Tanzania during the 1970s and early 1980s. Over 150 million Norwegian kroner (24 million US dollars) of Norwegian development support were spent on engineering studies and feasibility studies, although the dam has not been built. For the time being, the plans have been shelved.
The Rufiji River is the largest river in Tanzania with a huge catchment area comprising most of the south-eastern part of the country, which in turn receives relatively high annual rainfall. It has several large tributaries (Ruaha, Kilombero, Luwego and Mbarangandu) and many small. The tributaries meet and pass through a relatively narrow passage, Stiegler's Gorge, before descending to the flat lower plains, meandering down to a large delta area vegetated by mangrove forests, and finally flowing out through several mouths into the Indian Ocean.
The area immediately upstream of Stiegler's Gorge is the largest national nature reserve area in Tanzania, Selous Game Reserve, which is also the biggest in Africa. Further upstream on the Ruaha tributary are two hydropower dams, Kidatu and Mtera, and areas important for maize, groundnut, sisal, tobacco and cattle production.
The area downstream of Stiegler's Gorge is prime quality agricultural land with rich alluvial soil, naturally irrigated and fertilised by a cycle of annual flooding, with seasonal cultivation of rice, maize and cotton by small-scale peasant farmers. Coconuts, cashewnuts and other crops are also cultivated. Important seasonal fisheries are also dependent upon the natural flooding patterns. Furthest downstream are mangrove forests, constituting an important resource themselves, and an essential biotope for their contributions to marine productivity. The Mafia Channel's rich fishing grounds and the oceanic waters off the Tanzanian coast receive important inputs of nutrients from the river's outflow.
14. 3 ANTICIPATED EFFECTS OF A LARGE DAM
During the 1970s and early 80s, there was a lot of Norwegian activity concentrated on the prospects of building a large dam at Stiegler's Gorge. As shown in chapter 13, Norway has much experience and competence in hydropower technology from their own industrial development, and they now have a number of companies which export this technology abroad. Tanzania has been the main recipient of Norwegian development aid since the early 1970s, and it was natural that one area of activity could be hydropower.
If one is to consider the possibility of constructing a dam as a development aid project, it would seem obvious that one should investigate the following:
| • | The various purposes that such a project could serve |
| • | The various options in size and technology |
| • | The positive and negative social and ecological impacts that could be anticipated |
The Norwegian proposed plans for a dam at Stiegler’s Gorge concentrated only on one purpose (electrical power production), it opted for maximum size and most advanced technology, and it resisted those who raised questions about negative social and ecological impacts.
Those in favour of the "one-purpose/maximum-size" approach included Norwegian hydropower companies and engineering consultants, some NORAD key personnel and some key Tanzanian leaders and bureaucrats. Those critical to the approach included some Tanzanian and Norwegian researchers, some NORAD personnel (increasing with time) and a few Tanzanian leaders, and at a later stage (interestingly) the World Bank who did not consider the approach adequate nor the project financially viable.
Let us briefly examine the three questions raised above:
1. The various purposes that such a project could serve:
A dam project could provide electricity, help in flood control, supply water for irrigation, be a reservoir for drinking water, and fisheries could be developed in the artificial lake.
2. The various options in size and technology:
Many different dam sizes and designs could be used, taking into consideration the level of technology in the country and the short-term and long-term requirements which could be accommodated by a gradual building up of capacity. "Economies of scale" which may apply in Norway are not necessarily relevant in Tanzania.
3. The social and ecological impacts:
The positive impacts include the purposes stated above, and also economic stimuli which could result from a well-planned and well-balanced project. The negative impacts could be many and of far-reaching consequences. Some of the most important could be:
| a) | A large area is inundated with water, flooding habitable areas and altering the ecology of that area and its surroundings drastically. This will probably have complex and irreversible effects on the vegetation and wildlife in the area, especially the Selous Reserve which contains threatened species. |
| b) | Settlements of migrant fishermen would arise near the lake, but these would probably be very unstable since the fish populations of artificial lakes are normally characterised by huge fluctuations, especially in early years after impoundment. |
| c) | Infrastructure lacks in the present Selous Reserve area, but the building up of such infrastructure would constitute a serious disturbance to the wildlife, and would probably aggravate the already serious problems of poaching. |
| d) | Floating plants would become a problem, as in the Kilombero area upstream. Herbicides may be used to control them, polluting the water. |
| e) | Sanitation and diseases would be immediate problems in a quickly-growing settlement. Sewage may be disposed into the lake untreated, and bilharzia and other water-related diseases would probably become a problem. |
| f) | Sediment from the rivers would be deposited at the rear end of the new lake and would fill it up, giving the dam a short effective lifetime. |
| g) | Fluctuating water levels in the lake can cause unstable ecological conditions for lake-shore fauna and flora and fish which breed and feed in shallows, and can be awkward for people living close to the lake. |
| h) | The construction of the dam would require a large community of workers and a lot of temporary infrastructure. Stiegler's Gorge is far from any other settlements and social problems may be rife. |
| i) | The sheer weight of water of an artificial lake 120 kilometres long and over 100 metres deep could cause seismic disturbances with obviously very serious consequences to the dam and everything downstream of it. |
| j) | The water leaving the outlets from the turbines would be absolutely sediment-free, causing erosion of the relatively soft soil around Stiegler's Gorge, possibly endangering the dam itself. |
| k) | The fact that major floods, such as the one occurring in 1979, were not properly accommodated in the design of the dam (completed in 1978), means that the danger of overflowing the dam is also very real. |
| l) | Downstream of the dam, reduced sediment transport may cause degradation and steepening of river banks so that seasonal flooding with water carrying nutrients and alluvium would no longer naturally irrigate and fertilise the huge Rufiji Basin area, one of the most fertile agricultural areas in Tanzania. |
| m) | Fallen water table levels would cause desiccation of soils and drastic effects on vegetation in the flood plain areas. |
| n) | Fallen water table levels would also cause a disruption of traditional agricultural practices and would also make artificial irrigation and supplementation of nutrients with chemical fertilisers necessary. This would be very costly, would take a long time to accomplish, and would have several longterm negative ecological consequences. |
| o) | Consequent salinisation of soils from artificial fertilisers and irrigation would also be a problem. |
| p) | Water-borne diseases are notoriously associated with irrigation schemes, and these would undoubtedly affect the Rufiji Basin area. |
| q) | The Rufiji Basin has a number of important seasonal lakes with a specially adapted fish fauna which are dependent upon seasonal flooding. |
| r) | The total trapping of alluvial sediments can result in excessive erosion of river mouths and delta areas and recession of shorelines and even disappearance of islands. |
| s) | Mangrove forests in the delta are also dependent upon the supply of sediments and nutrients. These would suffer due to erosion and also cause negative impacts for those species inhabiting the mangroves, including several important commercial fish and crustaceans which have juvenile stages in the mangroves. |
| t) | The loss of mangrove forests would effect people who harvest them for poles and firewood. |
| u) | Salt intrusion due to decreased flow of the river may cause increased salinisation of agricultural areas inland from the river mouth. Rice cultivation would be particularly seriously affected. |
| v) | Spawning and growth cycles of marine fish and prawn species would be impacted in near-shore delta areas and the Mafia Channel area. |
| w) | Further offshore the productivity of Tanzania's coastal waters and their fisheries would also be effected by reduced nutrient supply. |
| x) | The proposed aluminium refining industry would have several potentially negative impacts, both economically, socially and ecologically. |
| y) | The imported technology for an advanced power station and the necessarily advanced infrastructure for distribution of this electrical power would be a huge burden to Tanzania, and make the country even more dependent upon foreign technology. |
| z) | The enormous costs of such a project (over 2 billion US dollars) would put the Tanzanian peasants and workers into deeper debt long into the next century. |
Having now reached point number z), I shall stop the list although I am sure that my Norwegian friends could probably suggest points æ), ø) and å) and many more, but I hope that this list gives some impression of the factors which should have been taken into account.
It can be insinuated that many of the negative impacts of large dams are much less serious or do not exist for smaller dams, and their positive effects can therefore be maximised.
14. 4 NORWEGIAN INVOLVEMENT
Peasant farmers, fishermen and traders have built up a body of knowledge of the Rufiji's flow and flooding over very many generations. The river is essential to agriculture, fisheries and transport in the region, and a knowledge of its normal rhythms and occasional excesses is important to the people in contact with it. People living in villages near to the Rufiji have memories of which years there were exceptional floods, which of the seven mouths has experienced the most flow at different times, the extent of salt penetration up into the delta region at various times, etc.
This part of Africa was colonised by the German imperialists through the brute force of military power during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth. After conquering the anti-colonial resistance, the German wished to exploit the natural resources of the country and they made investigations of the navigability of the river, and also examined potential for irrigated agriculture and hydropower production as early as 1904. The leader of an investigation in 1907, Stiegler, was killed by an elephant at the gorge, which was named after him.
The British imperialists took over colonial power in Tanganyika in 1919, and an investigation of the Rufiji's agricultural potential was made by Telford in 1929.
In 1952 a FAO team made a brief survey of the Rufiji basin, and then carried out a more thorough survey which was published in 1961. The report emphasised irrigated agricultural potential and flood control, but also examined hydropower potential.
Tanganyika gained independence in 1961 and after the union with Zanzibar in 1964, the country was named Tanzania. After independence the main studies carried out by foreign development aid agencies and consultants were the American USAID (1967), the Japanese JETRO (1968), Norconsult (1972) and Hafslund/Norplan (1980), both Norwegian.
The American and Japanese reports were primarily concerned with hydropower generation, and the Japanese suggested an aluminium refining industry to utilise this power. The Norconsult study also examined only hydropower aspects of the potential dam, with the economic assumption that power consuming industries should be established to make the project financially feasible. The Hafslund/Norplan study gave some consideration to flood control, irrigation and fishing in the anticipated artificial lake, but there was little information available to them on these aspects and their principal emphasis was concentrated on production of hydropower for power consuming industries.
The Rufiji Basin Development Authority (RUBADA) was established by the Tanzanian Government in 1975 in order to develop the region, and their main interest was also in the maximisation of hydropower production. They were supposed to provide inputs to the planning processes concerning agricultural production, etc., but did not have the resources or manpower to supply these in time.
During the 1970s, researchers from the University of Dar es Salaam began to raise criticisms of the planned project. Staff of the Bureau for Resources Assessment and Land-Use Planning, the Institute of Development Studies, Department of Zoology and Marine Biology, and Department of Economics, began to question various aspects of the project. Sandberg and Havnevik, both Norwegians working at the university, voiced their criticisms to NORAD from 1974. Within NORAD various people also began to see problems with the project. Criticisms were aimed at the socio-economic and ecological impacts of the dam, health problems, economic assessments (such as projections for electricity demand), and technical aspects (such as the proposed "artificial flood").
NORAD sought the views of the World Bank, which would not consider financing such a single-purpose project. NORAD then sent a delegation to Tanzania which stressed the importance of a multi-purpose approach to the dam project. They concluded that impact studies should be carried out by Tanzanian institutions and foreign consultants.
Initially, a good atmosphere of cooperation was created and there was progress in impact studies. But soon problems arose for university researchers who were critical of the project, who were marginalised and denied access to information and resources. Some, including those considered least critical, were able to complete their work. Of the 27 studies carried out during 1979-1982, 18 of the most strategic and expensive ones were carried out by foreign consultants, two minor studies were carried out by RUBADA staff, two studies by expatriates at the university, and five studies by Tanzanians at various institutions.
An interesting case was when Dr Boni Mwaiseje and I decided to visit the Rufiji delta and Mafia Channel to study possible effects the dam might have on the ecology and fisheries of this area. We were met with several obstructions and objections by a Norwegian/NORAD employee of RUBADA because he considered us "critical" towards the project. We were also refused access to reports and documents relevant to our study. Foreign consultants were called in to do quick "hit and run" studies on these aspects. It is interesting to note that they never contacted us in this respect, nor were we ever allowed access to read their reports.
The Bureau of Resource Assessment and Land-Use Planning at the university, which played an important role in coordinating Tanzanian researchers independent studies, also experienced great difficulty in gaining access to information.
In 1983, NORAD financed Norplan and Mark Segal to complete an "integration study". It is interesting to note that this was carried out by those whom had been involved in the earlier studies, without any independent views, and the conclusions were foregone: a hasty cosmetic attempt to present a single- purpose hydropower project as a multi-purpose one.
Some basic technical faults are obvious in this "integration study". They only considered flood data from 1956-1978, and ignored the record flood of 1979. They overlooked Hafslund's warning that releases of more than 2500 m3/s from the low-level outlets would cause erosion, and they persisted in using Mark Segal's absurdly large electricity demand prognosis in spite of drops in demand during 1981, 1982 and 1983. But more importantly, the "integration study" starkly shows how vested interests and lobbies can interplay to promote their own narrow interests against the broader interests of the people of the impacted areas, the ecological consequences in the area and the overall national economy of Tanzania.
Havnevik (1988) concludes that "the project would have been a major national disaster both economically and socially if it had been carried out according to the plans from 1980 onwards". And NORAD’s 1988 country programme review for Tanzania states: "The development of power consuming industry during the eighties would have been impossible, and because of this Stiegler’s Gorge would have become an economical disaster".
Fortunately for the Tanzanian people of the Rufiji area, for the ecology of the region and for the Tanzanian national economy, the project did not become a reality.
14. 5 PANGANI
The Pangani Falls Redevelopment Project is the largest project ever to be handled by NORAD. Several Norwegian hydropower companies have received contracts for services and equipment to the project.
The Pangani hydropower project will utilise the waters from the Pangani river, which has its headwaters in the Kilimanjaro and Meru mountains. The power station is built at a large construction site near Hale in the coastal region of Tanga.
The project entails rehabilitation of various components of the existing Pangani Falls hydropower station, as well as construction of a modern underground power station which will increase the capacity of the plant by 66 MW. A new transmission line to the coastal city of Tanga is also part of the project. The old power station has an installed capacity of 20 MW, and a fall height of around 170 meters.
Project costs are estimated at 820 million Norwegian kroner (128 million US dollars). Norwegian, Finnish and Swedish development aid authorities are providing total funding of the project, with Norway covering 42 percent of the expenses, while Finland and Sweden will cover 33 and 25 percent, respectively. NORAD is in charge of negotiations with the Tanzanian government.
14. 6 TIED AID
The Pangani project is financed by Nordic donors, and it is built by Nordic companies. If problems arise, the donors decide how to solve them, despite NORAD's stated policy that the recipient should have a large degree of responsibility in aid projects.
Apparently, the Pangani Falls Redevelopment Project is oversized in proportion to the amount of water available in the river. It is not clear whether there is enough water to allow the power station to operate at maximum capacity throughout the year. Upstream of the dam, local farmers use Pangani waters for irrigation purposes. In Tanzania, as in other sub-tropical countries, water flow varies greatly from season to seasons, and from year to year. If the upstream farmers continue to use Pangani water like they have done traditionally, there will not be sufficient water entering the power station in the dry season between monsoons. Therefore, the investors want to make sure that the hydropower project is given priority before the local users.
There is already a situation of conflict in the Pangani area concerning the use of water. Headed by NORAD, the donors are demanding that the Tanzanian government intervene in the use of river water by the local farmers. The donors want the farmers to pay for whatever water they use for irrigation. The minutes from the 1993 Country Programme Review between Tanzania and Norway states: "The importance of ensuring effective water management, implementing a tariff policy to ensure financial sustainablility of TANESCO and reflecting actual cost in producing electricity was emphasised. The need to ensure effective water management was emphasised also as a critical element in terms of the Pangani Hydro Power project. Norway is in this respect speaking in the capacity as the leading donor of the project. The above mentioned conditions should be considered as basis for the future Norwegian development aid to the sector" (NORAD, 1993).
The selection of companies which participate in the project represent another element of the donor control of the project. The condition that a number of Nordic companies be pre-qualified for placing bids for contracts in the project is embedded in the financial arrangements. The contracts were signed during 1991 (Water Power and Dam Construction, January 1993). Nordic Power Group (NPG), a joint venture between the Norwegian company Noremco and the Finnish company Lemminkanen OY, won the contractor contracts for Pangani. Equipment is supplied by Kvaerner Energy and ABB Energi, both Norwegian companies. Consulting services are provided by companies IVO International of Finland and Norplan of Norway, through IVO-Norplan. These assist Tanzania Electric Supply Company (TANESCO) with project design, producing tender documents, monitoring, payments and training programs. TANESCO has got the overall responsibility of the project, and awards all contracts.
Thirty percent of the construction contracts involve local supplies of services and goods. TANELEC, a Tanzanian-Norwegian company in which ABB is one of the co- owners, won contracts for supplying some transformers and transmission lines.
According to the magazine Development Today (December 1991), tenders have not been invited for the supply of turbines, generators and transformers. TANESCO, assisted by IVO-Norplan, has simply negotiated the contracts with Kværner and ABB. The remaining contracts were based on tenders invited in the donor countries only. According to Development Today, Director General of Norplan, Jan Lindemark, states that the economic depression in the Nordic countries has provided the rationale for tying the contracts to Nordic companies.
So far, Norwegian companies have received orders worth 274.5 million (42 million US dollars), or 42 percent of the total contracts. This equals the Norwegian proportion of the funding.
14. 7 WATER AVAILABILITY
Water supply for the project, as presently designed, is threatened by both the local farmers' use of river waters, and by large irrigation projects upstream of the dam, financed by the World Bank and Japanese donors.
The Pangani and Kihansi dams both submerge relatively small areas compared to, say, the Stiegler's Gorge dam, and negative environmental effects are correspondingly smaller. As mentioned, the biggest problem regarding Pangani may be the question of water availability. Mean annual rainfall in the catchment area varies widely, from 400 mm to more than 2000 mm (IVO-Norplan, 1994). During the dry season, the water flow is severely reduced. In April 1994 the water situation upstream of Pangani Falls was critical, as the monsoon was delayed.
The Pangani river system consists of the main river and nine major tributaries. The catchment area, one of the largest in the region, covers some 42 000 square kilometres. The area is well suited for agricultural production, and from time immemorial, local farmers have used Pangani waters for irrigation purposes. Local authorities have ignored restrictions laid down by the central government, and have generously distributed permissions to put land under cultivation, resulting in increased water demands. More than one thousand authorised places for tapping irrigation water from the river, along with at least two thousand unauthorised, are to be found in the area. In addition, many of the authorised users exceed their quotas. Only some ten to fifteen percent of the irrigation water is returned as seepage back to the Pangani.
It may seem like an impossible task to control the use of water in the Pangani river effectively, the way the donors demand of the Tanzanian government.
14. 8 CRITICISM OF PANGANI
The Pangani project has been strongly criticised in Finland, both inside the Finnish development authorities and in the press. The Finnish magazine Suomen Luvalenti describes the project as a monument to the constantly detoriating quality of Finnish development aid. The magazine claims that the project will be operating on merely half of the expected capacity, due to the use of the water in the river. It is strongly critical of the role of the Finnish development agency, Finnida, in the project.
In the eighties, Canadian authorities financed a study on the Tanzanian electricity sector. Among the recommendations in this study was a 60 MW power plant at Pangani Falls. On the basis of this study, Finnida chose to provide financing for the prefeasibility study for the proposed Pangani Falls Redevelopment Project in March 1989. At the time, several more critical studies of the project were also available.
The Finnish consulting company IVO International was involved both in the so- called task specification and the feasibility study. The task specification is more or less a detailed list of what the feasibility study is going to look into, and how to do it. In this case, IVO had vested economic interests in the outcome of the task specification. This is a violation of Finnida’s guidelines for such projects.
The feasibility study made by IVO-Norplan does not cover all the aspects of the project it was supposed to do. It is strongly biased towards hydropower technology, while the government ordering the study also wanted to clarify the question of water availability in the Pangani river.
In 1990, a study on water resources was made. The study concluded that there were uncertainties regarding the amount of available water in the river. Securing sufficient water flow into the hydropower station would entail the establishment of an extensive water regulation system, which would require effective control mechanisms. The risk of the amount of water in the river being too scarce and the potential for conflicts over Pangani waters was therefore known when the decision to go ahead with the project's final design phase was taken in 1991.
These questions have recently been discussed among the donors, with some surprise as to why they were not taken into account from the start. In February 1993, the Finnida environmental advisor Karl Silfverberg wrote in a memorandum to his superiors: "This raises several questions on the expertise and impartiality of IVO. How is it possible that a large and experienced consulting company specialised in hydropower rushes head on to prepare an expensive technical power plant plan before the long-term availability of water resources has been ensured with certainty? I am one hundred percent sure that if this was IVO’s own hydropower plant investment, the water resources issue and the water management of the entire catchment basin as well as related risk factors had been studied in detail before any expensive technical planning of extensive rock drillings had been started."
Kari Karanko, former Finnish ambassador to Tanzania, is also quite critical of the Pangani project (Development Today, March 1993). According to Karanko, the Pangani river is almost on the verge of drying out. Karanko, once central in securing Nordic support to the project, now strongly criticises both Finnida and IVO International, claiming that adequate studies of water use and the impacts on water supply to the power station have not been made. He fears that irrigation, population growth and logging will threaten the economic viability of this large investment. In the same article, deputy Director General of Finnida, Jorma Paukku, admits that conflicting interests over water use exist in the area.
NORAD's demand that a price be set on the use of water has placed the Tanzanian government in a difficult position. It is definitely not going to be popular among the Tanzanian farmers if the government starts charging them for using the waters to which they have traditional rights. A special agency has been set up to look into the issue of water use, both upstream and downstream of Pangani Falls. However, persuading the farmers to start paying for water is not going to be easy. Says head of the new agency, Butingo Luhumbika: "We have started work on registration and information. But some places we have been encountered by villagers carrying spears who have not at all been receptive to arguments about water tariffs" (Utvikling, 3-1993).
In spite of the strong criticisms against the project, NORAD denounces all allegations that the project is problem-ridden: "All those who have been involved in the planning of the Pangani plant deny this [that the project has severe problems]. Nonetheless, work is done to ensure control with usage of river water. - This has no connection with any fear that the Pangani river will provide insufficient water for the power plant, says Norwegian ambassador and NORAD representative in Tanzania, Arild Eik" (Utvikling, 3-1993).
Considering the pressure NORAD has put on the Tanzanian government to charge water usage, this denial of any problems seems odd. Control over water usage has more or less been made a condition for further development aid from NORAD. By March 1994 Tanzanian press is reporting that there might not be enough water to cover the requirements of the hydropower project.
In the Suomen Luvalenti article, a second stage of the project is mentioned, to avoid the Pangani Falls Redevelopment Project ending up a scandal: "If a new reservoir is built upstream, the power plant will be able to operate".
COMPANIES AND INSTITUTIONS
INVOLVED IN THE PANGANI PROJECT
| Owner | Tanzania Electric Supply Company (TANESCO) |
(million NOK) | (million US$) |
| Investors | NORAD, 42 % | 281.2 | 43.9 |
| FINNIDA, 33 % | 220.9 | 34.5 | |
| SIDA, 25 % | 167.4 | 26.1 | |
| Tanzanian government | 23.0 | 3.6 | |
| Consultant | IVO-Norplan Joint Venture | 16.0 | 2.5 |
| Contractors | Nordic Power Group | 230.0 | 35.9 |
| TANESCO | 65.0 | 10.2 | |
| Suppliers | Kværner Energy | 67.0 | 10.5 |
| Munch Kranservice | 3.0 | 0.5 | |
| Hato Maskinmontering | 16.0 | 2.5 |
Source: Water Power and Dam Construction, January 1993.
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