6 - The Notorious Balbina Dam

Summary

Chapter 6 tells the story of the Balbina Dam. Built during the 1980s, it was the military regime’s last and most controversial dam, and it encapsulates this book’s main arguments. Political pressures were instrumental in the decision to build the dam, whose floodwaters inundated a large area of the Amazon Rainforest that was inhabited by the Waimiri-Atroari Indigenous community. Instead of investing in meaningful environmental safeguards, the government planned an ostentatious greenwashing campaign. The result was social and ecological calamities on par with those at earlier dams. But there was one principal difference that made Balbina exceptional: timing. Balbina came on the heels of a spate of other controversial dam projects that had turned many Brazilians against big dams. Furthermore, the military regime stepped down in 1985, during construction, and the civilian government that replaced it finished the dam. The return to civilian rule emboldened dam critics to pressure the government for more effective safeguards, and though the civilian government did not suspend the project, it did implement better belated remediation programs than the military regime had done for its reservoirs. Balbina was thus the last of its kind and became a watershed moment in the history of Brazilian dams.