Cascada de Las Monjas, Xico, Veracruz, Mexico. Photo source: ©© Sergio Lubezky
Excerpts;
Since January, villagers and townspeople near the Los Pescados river in southeast Mexico have been blocking the construction of a dam, part of a multi-purpose project to supply potable water to Xalapa, the capital of the state of Veracruz.
The dam has a planned capacity of 130 million cubic metres, a reservoir surface area of 4.13 square kilometres and a cost of over 400 million dollars. It is one of more than a hundred dams planned by federal and state governments, which are causing conflict with local communities…
Tropical Dams: Ebullition Causes Methane Emissions Considerably More Powerful than CO2, CNRS via ALphagalileo (09-14-2014)
For the first time, methane emissions by ebullition from tropical reservoirs have been accurately quantified…
Sediment Trapped Behind Dams Makes Them ‘Hot Spots’ for Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Science Daily (08-01-2013)
The large reservoirs of water behind the world’s 50,000 large dams are a known source of methane. Methane has a warming effect 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. That knowledge led to questions about hydroelectric power’s image as a green and nonpolluting energy source…
