SAO PAULO -- The Belo Monte hydropower plant in the Brazilian Amazon, one of the world’s largest, was designed to channel water from the Xingu River in a way that would avoid the need for large reservoirs, which could flood surrounding areas.After years of legal battles, authorities approved the project, located in the southwestern part of the state of Para, on one condition: it would not threaten ecosystems and communities of Indigenous people along stretches of the river.
A decade after operations began in 2016, Brazilian courts have found that Belo Monte failed to meet that requirement and that its environmental and social impacts were far greater than forecast.“They were just confirming what we already knew,” said Ana Laíde Barbosa, a member of Movimento Xingu Vivo, an advocacy group that has been fighting the Belo Monte project since 2008.The courts' understanding, she said, did not happen by chance: “There was research, experience.
There was ancestry and inherited knowledge.”The legal setbacks raise broader questions about Brazil’s reliance on hydropower, with several dams supplying most of the nation's electricity.Belo Monte, the second largest, was originally planned during the military dictatorship in the 1970s but wasn’t pushed forward until decades later by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2010, during his second term.
Today, it supplies about 10% of Brazil's electricity.In December, the Supreme Court ordered the federal government to pay 19 million reais ($3.6 million) in compensation to Indigenous communities affected by the dam.Separately, a local court ordered Norte Energia, the company that built and operates Belo Monte, to supply clean water to communities whose natural sources dried up, leaving them dependent on bottled water.In the most consequential ruling, a federal judge ordered Norte Energia to reassess how much water it diverts from the Xingu River to run its turbines, a move the company says could reduce power outpu...