Myitsone Dam
The Myitsone Dam is a large dam and hydroelectric power development project which was planned to be built in northern Myanmar. The proposed construction site is at the confluence of the Mali and N’mai rivers and the source of the Irawaddy River. the project is suspended, but China has been lobbying for its revival.
Had the dam been completed according to plans in 2017 it would have been the fifteenth largest hydroelectric power station in the world. The dam, planned to be long and high, was to be built by the Upstream Ayeyawady Confluence Basin Hydropower Company. The company is a joint venture of the China Power Investment Corporation, the Burmese Government's Ministry of Electric Power, and the Asia World Company. The dam was planned to have a generation capacity of 6,000 megawatts and to produce electricity primarily for export to Yunnan, China. CPI contended that China would not be the electricity's primary market and stated that Myanmar would have first claim on the electricity generated, with the remainder or surplus sold for export. Opponents remained skeptical because most Burmese are not connected to the electrical grid, and doubted whether the dam would improve their livelihood.
The dam project has been controversial in Burma due to its enormous flooded area, environmental impacts, location 60 miles from the Sagaing faultline, and uneven share of electricity output between the two countries. The Burmese public regards the Irrawaddy River as the birthplace of Burmese civilization. Although access to the Chinese market guarantees the dam's electricity sales, for many Burmese the Myitsone Dam represents growing Chinese influence in Burma which they perceive as "exploitative" to the country hitherto isolated by Western economic sanctions. Even government officials have differing opinions on the project.
On 30 September 2011, amid democratic reforms in the country, President Thein Sein announced that the Myitsone Dam project was to be suspended during his tenure. Because the government appeared to have taken public opinion into account, the unexpected decision was seen as a reversal of the authoritarian rule since the coup in 1962.
Location
The Burmese-language name Myitsone refers to the river confluence where the Mali and N’Mai rivers merge; in the Jinghpaw language, the confluence is known as Mali N’Mai Zup.The dam site is below the confluence of the Mali River and the N'Mai River about north of Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State, in northern Burma. The source of both the N'mai and Mali rivers is the Himalaya glaciers of northern Burma in the vicinity of 28° N. The easternmost of the two, N'mai river, is the larger stream and rises in the Languela Glacier north of Putao. It is not navigable due to its strong current, whereas the smaller western river, the Mali, is navigable, despite a few rapids.
The project site is in the politically unstable Kachin State. Since 1962, the Kachin Independence Army has been waging war against Burmese military. Despite a ceasefire in 1994, clashes and bomb explosions occasionally occur near the dam site. In 2011, clashes between Burmese military and KIA intensified and the Burmese military ordered airstrikes in northern Kachin State.
History
The Myitsone Dam is part of the Confluence Region Hydropower Project, which includes seven dams with a total installed capacity of 20,000 MW. CRHP alone accounts for 41% of the total power capacity called for by a 30-year strategic plan. Outlined in 2001, the plan includes 64 hydropower plants and three coal power plants with combined installed capacity of more than.The Myanmar Electrical Power Enterprise and the Agriculture and Irrigation Ministry scheduled the Irawaddy Myitsone Dam Multipurpose Water Utilization Project in 2001. The survey phase was initiated in 2003. First the government contracted the Japanese Kansai Electric Power Company to build a small weather station at Tang Hpre village, near the confluence. Chinese and Burmese contractors, including Yunnan Machinery Equipment Import & Export Company, Kunming Hydropower Institute of Design, surveyed the dam site. In 2006, Suntac Technologies Co. Ltd., a Burmese geographic information system mapping contractor set up an office at the monastery in Tang Hpre village. They also set up a temporary camp at Washawng village to facilitate transport of survey equipment from the YMEC company in China. In October, the Asia World Company built a project implementation camp on a hilltop at the dam site downstream from the confluence. When the camp was complete, Chinese technicians stayed and surveyed the area for five months. In December 2006, the Ministry of Electric Power No. 1 and the China Power Investment Corporation signed a memorandum of understanding for a project at Myitsone and a project at Chibwe.
The design phase began in 2007. The Changjiang Design Institute of China sent several groups of design personnel and conducted geological drilling, reservoir inspection, and hydrological measuring near the dam site. To supply electricity for dam construction projects, the small, Chibwe Nge hydropower project was built in April 2007. In May, the New Light of Myanmar reported that the Ministry of Power No. 1 and CPI would build seven hydropower dams on the N'Mai and Irawaddy rivers.
On 16 June 2009, Myanmar Ambassador Thein Lwin and President of China Power Investment Corporation Lu Qizhou signed a memorandum of agreement between the Department of Hydropower Implementation and the China Power Investment Corporation for the development, operation, and transfer of the hydropower projects in Maykha, Malikha and upstream of Irrawaddy-Myitsone River basins.
In late-2009, a team of 80 Burmese and Chinese scientists and environmentalists published a 945 page environmental impact study of the Myitsone Dam for China Power Investment. It concluded that the dam should never be built. The Burma Rivers Network, which opposes the dam, obtained a copy of the report and made it public. The Ministry of Electric Power-1 responded that it had done its own environmental assessment and that the dam would be built regardless. The official opening ceremony of the dam construction phase was held on 21 December.
Economics
The majority of the total US$3.6 billion construction cost was to be covered by the China Power Investment Corporation in a joint venture with the Ministry of Electric Power No. 1 of Myanmar and the Asia World Company. The Burmese government would get 10% of the electricity generated and 15% of the project shares for land use. In addition, the government would charge a withholding tax and an export tax on electricity exported to China. After a fifty year period, the government would totally own the project. The Burmese government would earn about US$54 billion via tax payments, power and shares, accounting for 60% of the total revenue of the Irrawaddy projects during the contracted 50 years, more than CPI's return on investment during the fifty years Chinese operation period according to the president of CPI. However, the government economic calculations have been criticized for not considering potential environmental and societal impacts.Design
The dam was planned to be a concrete faced rock-fill dam high and long, and projected to produce 6,000 MW of electricity by 2017. This is equivalent to 27% of the output of the Three Gorges Dam In China, the world's largest electricity-generating plant of any kind.Minister of Electric Power Zaw Min claimed that the dam was designed to withstand an earthquake of 8.0 Richter Scale, a scale that has never been recorded to have occurred in that region, and the most devastating flood of a millennium.
Power generation
The Myitsone Dam is the largest of the seven large dams currently planned on the Mali, N'Mai, and Irawaddy Rivers. The China Power Investment Corporation is project manager of the Confluence Region Hydropower Projects. The seven dams combined total design installed capacity is 20,000 MW of electricity.The dam is to provide electricity primarily to the China Southern Power Grid via its subsidiary, the Yunnan Power Grid Company, in Yunnan Province and then on to the power hungry eastern coastal areas of China, in conformity with the Chinese central government's "West to East Transmission Policy". The hydropower project was being implemented under an agreement signed in late-2006 with the state-owned China Power Investment Corporation and Burma's Ministry of Electric Power No 1. The dam and reservoir planning and construction is managed by the Burmese government in cooperation with the China Southern Power Grid and several subcontractors.
The dam would also supply 10% of its generated electricity to the Myanmar power grid if needed. The Chipwi Nge Hydropower Project, which was installed to provide electricity for construction projects, began supplying electricity to Myitkyina, Chipwi, and the Myitsone Resettlement Village. However, few villagers have electrical devices. "We don't need to buy candles, this is the only useful thing" a villager said. They would prefer to have their productive land back.
Social impact
The dam is expected to flood including 47 villages near the construction site and about 11,800 local people would be relocated in the newly built resettlement villages. The activists in exile stated that the dam would submerge historical temples, churches, and cultural heritage sites important to Kachin identity and history and the natural heritage of the Kachin people in Myitsone area would be lost.In response, the government reported in the state-run newspaper, New Light of Myanmar, that relocated villages from the project area had been provided with all forms of aids including water, electric power, and buildings and that the government also helped in relocation of religious buildings. CPI reported a total expense of 4.1 billion kyats in compensation and US$25 million in resettlement funding. The government stated that the remote region would benefit greatly from the new roads and access to electricity.
Local communities pointed out other issues such as the dam's location on earthquake-prone zone. They opposed the dam site because it is less than from the major Sagaing fault line, posing a risk to basin inhabitants if an earthquake weakened the dam or caused landslides in the reservoir. If the Irrawaddy Myitsone Dam broke during an earthquake, it would endanger the lives of hundred of thousands of people downstream in Kachin State's largest city, Myikyina.
In response, the government said that the dam would withstand an earthquake of magnitude 8.0 on the Richter scale. In an interview with Xinhua News, Lu Qizhou, President of China Power Investment Corporation said that Myitsone Hydropower Station follows the standard of fortification intensity 9, two points above the intensity of Zipingbu Hydropower Station that withstood 2008 Sichuan earthquake of 8.0 Richter scale. On the other hand, Burmese scientists who carried out the environmental assessment recommended building two smaller dams farther upstream instead of building in an earthquake-prone zone.
A social benefit of the project pointed out by its proponents is that the construction and the maintenance of the dam would employ a large number of people.