Part of a rare near-pristine wetland near Harrismith in the Free State will be changed forever after Mohammed Valli Moosa, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, allowed Eskom to dam part of the area for an electrical scheme.
Eskom has to use its full generating capacity to supply South Africans with power in peak hours. But power goes to waste in off-peak hours.
The pumped storage scheme at the Braamhoek wetland will use excess electricity to pump water to the top of a ravine in off-peak hours, from where it will be released over hydro turbines in a tunnel to generate electricity during peak demand.
The scheme needs a dam above and below the ravine. A tunnel housing the hydro turbines will link the two. The top dam presents few environmental problems. But the lower dam will flood part of the Braamhoek wetland.
Only 5% of the wetland will be flooded, but Donovan Kotze, a wetlands expert at the University of Natal, believes that a critical part of the environment will be lost.
“It is a critically important wetland that supports several endangered species,” he says. “Apart from its ecological value, it is also an aesthetically magnificent area with beautiful waterfalls cascading down. All these waterfalls will be flooded if the scheme is built.”
Piet-Louis Grundling of the International Mire Conservation Group (IMCG) Africa, says that the dam could be built 900m upstream. “There would be far less environ-mental impact and it would be a win-win situation. But it would cost Eskom R150-million more to build.”
Tony Stott, an Eskom spokes- person, disagrees. He says building the dam at the upstream site would cause more damage. “The dam wall will be longer and two walls will have to be built.”
The wetland hosts two of the most endangered birds in South Africa, the whitewinged flufftail and the wattled crane. Rand Water has also invested R2-million in rehabilitating the wetland to ensure clean water for Gauteng.
Eskom revealed its plans for Braamhoek in the late nineties. The Department of Environmental Affairs first approved the application to dam part of the wetland. But after an appeal in April last year, Moosa overturned his department’s earlier decision.
Eskom appealed to the high court to review Moosa’s decision. The court referred the issue back to the minister, who revised his decision last week after evaluating an environmental impact assessment done by Poltech. Eskom commissioned the study.
But Free State conservation officials claim the environmental assessment did not adequately reflect the ecological value of the wetland.
“Poltech purposefully attempted to falsely present the Braamhoek scheme as a site with minimal environmental impact and as the only site suitable for the proposed development. It is my personal opinion that Eskom’s approach towards this entire process was corporate interest, and not public interest,” said Nacelle Collins of Free State’s Department of Tourism, Environmental and Economic Affairs in a letter to Moosa.
Free State Conservation says the ecological value of the peatland was also underplayed in Poltech’s assessment. Grundling says there are only four peat wetlands in the Free State and Braamhoek is the largest and the most pristine.
Stott retorted: “We did an assessment of the peat and our specialists found that the impact wasn’t that significant. Downstream from where we are planning to build there is a greater quantity of peat that will not be affected.”
Birdlife SA and Middelpunt Wetland Trust, founded to conserve the flufftail, originally joined in Kotze’s objection to the scheme. But after what Kotze calls a “gentleman’s agreement” with Eskom, they withdrew their appeals. Kotze’s appeal stands.
Stott said Eskom intends to establish a partnership with Birdlife SA and Middelpunt Wetland trust to conserve Braamhoek. But accusations have been circulating on SA Birdnet, an Internet forum on birdlife, that Eskom bought off both organisations.