Mollejon Dam

Fantastic setting amind the mountains but the fact that there was so little water flowing down the river sort of surprised me though perhaps it should not have.  I say this because it is evident looking at the main river that we came along by the road up to San Ignacio (especially where we crossed the river) that flows are low.  Now this is perhaps due to this being the drier season or it could be due to alterations to the flows.  The matter of whether or not to develop hydropower in relatively pristine environments brings into sharp focus the challenges facing developing countries.  How much do you sacrifice of the environment in order to improve social conditions (and if indeed it does improve social conditions?).  Hydropower in Belize has with the building of the Challilo Dam been the subject of much contention.

Hydropower projects are usually designed on the basis of past flow records and the assumption that the climate is stable.  The one thing we have come to realise with climate change is that we can n o longer use the past records as a guide to the future.  So the question becomes; what strategies in your design and evaluation you use to incorporate CC into the development?

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Arrive in San Ignacio

We had a long day in the car. We traveled three hours to San Ignacio
and arrived at Cahel Pech Resort to drop off our luggage and get back
in the vehicles to go to the Mollejon dam and hydroelectric plant.
Belize typically bought electricity from Mexico but that can
frequently be expensive, especially seasonally. Damming the rivers has
been a recent occurrence in Belize and this source of electricity
makes Belize self-reliant. The dam itself is smaller than what I’m
used to seeing, but combined with a couple of other hydro-power plants
(one more we’ll see tomorrow), they seem to producing what they need.

The Cahel Pech Resort is sweet, has a lovely view and has a pool. But
again, very poor internet access. So while the Belize government is
working towards finding good sustainable sources of cleanly generated
electricity, I suggest they look into reliable network access for the
nation. Not so much for tourist and research parties to check their
email or upload their data, but for school children to be able to
enjoy the riches of the information found on the internets.

Posted via email from Meg's Scrap Paper

Trip to Belize With CERMES Students

Latitude: 17°33'21.51"N; Longitude: 88°18'24.88"W (appx)

I am in Belize with CERMES professors Dr. Adrian Cashman and Dr. Leonard Nurse (see photo) to assist them with their Water Resources Management field course. We took a very early flight out of Bridgetown, flew to Miami and then went on to Belize City where I am now two hours ahead of Barbados time. I am exhausted. But the weather is surprisingly and pleasantly cool and we may be in for perfect weather.

Here we are visiting our hosts Dr. and Mrs. Leslie of the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center, at their home in Lake Gardens, Belize (shown in group photo).

The plan is: we will be on a nine-day field trip, measuring river flow, making beach profiles, looking at hydro-electric power plants, and visiting agricultural areas. I will be helping the students use the tablet PCs for field mapping, setting them up with blogging and assisting them in making videos. This first evening, the internet is a little weak for all of us, but the idea is that the students will post to an individual blog and then those blogs will feed into a course blog called Belize Field Trip. Please feel free to check it out. I will also try to be useful as a reasonably knowledgeable field hack, as well.

Tomorrow we're up early again to head to Independence and Monkey River. I'll have the GPS working and get a more accurate reading of where we are.

Posted via email from Meg's Scrap Paper