The giant Quebec engineering firm, SNC-Lavalin, has announced it plans to bid for contracts to built the controversial Three Gorges dam in China.
“We have a long experience in the management of large hydroelectric projects, notably at LG-2A and LG-3, Idukki and Chamera-I, in India,” said Robert Racine, Vice-President, Public Affairs, at the company’s annual meeting in Montreal in mid-May.
Racine said he hopes the federal government will provide financial help to SNC-Lavalin to help it win some of the contracts for the lucrative project, expected to cost anywhere from $20 to $60 billion. SNC-Lavalin already benefitted from federal help when it prepared an environmental-impact study on the Three Gorges dam project together with Hydro-Quebec International in 1989. The study was criticized by environmentalists for whitewashing big problems with the hydro-project.
The dam will have a capacity of 17,600 megawatts (five times the size of the Great Whale Project), and will displace from one to two million people. It will flood 19 towns and create an artificial lake 560 kilometres long. Energy Probe, a Toronto-based group, says the project will be an environmental, social and economic catastrophe. The group is calling on Ottawa to refuse to finance the project.
