LÚCIO FLÁVIO PINTO
On April 3, the first turbine of the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant, on the Xingu River, started to operate – still in the pre-operational phase. It took place just over five years after the start of works on the plant, designed to be the fourth largest in the world and the largest entirely Brazilian.
On the same day, the bishop – of Austrian origin – Erwin Kräutler left the command of the Xingu diocese, after 50 years in office, having reached the age limit for his exercise, at 72 years old. He was the most active and prominent opponent of the enterprise.
The coincidence could be interpreted as a sign that Dom Erwin ended up being defeated in his campaign to prevent the execution of the project. Exactly on the day of his departure from the bishopric, in Altamira, Pará, the huge hydroelectric plant, the biggest infrastructure project (and the PAC, the Growth Acceleration Program, the main one of the PT government), became – literally – a fact. concrete?
The situation is more complex than this crude interpretation. The executive phase of the studies for the damming of the Xingu River began as soon as the fourth largest hydroelectric plant in the world, Tucuruí, on the Tocantins River, east of the Xingu, on a parallel axis, went into operation in 1984. It was one of the last major works inaugurated by the last of the generals, João Figueiredo, who held the presidency of the republic during the military regime (1964/1985).
Belo Monte should have followed the same path. Four upstream dams would retain water so that, in the summer, when the river’s flow can decrease by up to 30 times compared to the winter peak water flow, the plant could continue operating, thanks to the water stored in the flood period.
Only the reservoir of one of them, that of Babaquara, with six thousand square kilometers, would be twice as big as that of Tucuruí and would surpass that of Sobradinho, the largest artificial lake in Brazil (to have an idea of grandeur, the famous lake Paranoá, in Brasília, is less than 50 kmtwo ).
The outcry was enormous, including abroad, particularly at the World Bank, which refused to finance new hydroelectric dams in the Amazon and to endorse them with the international financial community. It is not by chance that the BNDES, which guarantees 85% of the plant’s cost, with subsidized credit, has become larger than the Bird, something unimaginable a short time ago, thanks to the PT’s benevolent management of the state development bank, personified in the economist Luciano Coutinho, the untouchable.
Eletronorte, which was leading Belo Monte after keeping ahead of Tucuruí, had to retreat. To change the appearance of the new hydroelectric plant, he canceled the other dams, guaranteed that only one would be maintained in the Xingu, precisely that of Belo Monte (formerly Kararaô), and presented a new, unprecedented and audacious project design.
The company used the maximum of creativity and audacity in terms of engineering to maintain the objective of taking advantage of the exceptional geographical condition of a stretch, known as the Volta Grande, where the river makes a big curve and, in 100 kilometers, drops 90 meters . It is a natural slope greater – by 20 meters – than the 70 meters that were raised in Tocantins to give it constant volume and strength to drive the immense 23 turbines of its powerhouse, each of them needing 500,000 liters of water per second. .
The problem is that, to meet the pressure of environmentalists, anthropologists, NGOs and the world community, the reservoir that survived would be too small (just over 10% of the size of Lake Tucuruí) to guarantee that in the summer there would be enough water to move the 18 turbines (larger than those at Tucuruí) down there.
Nor could the natural flow of the river be used, through its channel, because the succession of curves and the presence of islands in its bed take away the necessary speed of the waters. With a bold design, the solution was to divert the water retained in the main spillway, 100 kilometers away from the main powerhouse, through natural and artificial channels that now take the water down the 90-meter slope at a speed compatible with the size of the generation units. .
There is nothing like it in the annals of hydroelectric plants in Brazil and in the world. The engineers had to resort to a state-of-the-art design so that there would be no major flooding upstream (above) the dam (submerging a much larger area of Altamira), the river downstream (below) would not have artificial flow reduction (Norte Energia committed to maintain a flow of 700 cubic meters of water per second at the height of the drought, a volume greater than the natural discharge of the Xingu in this period), and to make the diversion, leaving the river bed, for the adduction of water in volume and speed engine at the required level.
The result of all this is that the use of concrete has multiplied, to the point of exceeding the volume used in the Panama Canal, and the project’s budget is on track to double in value: from the initial 19 billion reais to the R$32 billions today. It is known that part of this increase was caused by overbilling for the payment of bribes to politicians, executives and intermediaries, according to the investigation of Operation Lava-Jato.
Construtora Andrade Gutierrez confessed that it paid bribes to obtain the contracts for the execution of the work. To pay the bribes, Andrade, which is the second largest contractor in the country, overpriced these works. Once delivered, the money turned into legal donations to the campaigns of Dilma Rousseff (PT) and her allies in 2010 and 2014.
The information originated from the former president of the construction company, Otávio Marques de Azevedo, and was systematized by him in a spreadsheet presented to the Attorney General’s Office.
According to these data, in 2014, Andrade Gutierrez donated 20 million reais to Dilma’s campaign committee. In the table, which also includes donations in 2010 and 2012, approximately R$10 million donated to Dilma’s campaigns are linked to the contractor’s participation in public works contracts.
Corruption aside, the investment in the plant was really burdened by the search for a profile of harmony with the environment and the native population that was accepted by critics. No project conceived to take advantage of the turbulent slope of the Xingu would be better than the one presented, from this point of view.
Archbishop Erwin Kräutler, former bishop of the Xingu. (Photo: Elaíze Farias)
Yet critics, like the former bishop, continued to oppose the work, as a matter of principle, no longer on the grounds that it had been altered (and turned into an engineering monster, both repellent and admirable) precisely in depending on the restrictions presented. D. Erwin and the current that follows or disseminates him do not want the bus – period. In that light, they were soundly defeated.
Two days after the first high-power turbine went into operation, the second low-power machine was started. The first is in the main powerhouse, which houses another 17 turbines, with a generation of 650 megawatts each, which began to irrigate the National Interconnected System on the 3rd.
With just this machine, which represents 5% of Belo Monte’s final power of 11,300 megawatts, the plant is already producing twice the energy needed to meet all the consumption of Belém, with its 1.5 million inhabitants. The second machine, activated on the 5th, is part of the secondary powerhouse. Installed on the main spillway (another innovative detail of the project), it will have six smaller power turbines, with just under 40 MW. As they are of the bulb type, they work with running water, without accumulation. They generate with a drop of 12 meters of water, four times less than the height required by a conventional turbine, of greater power.
The secondary powerhouse will complete its motorization in January next year. The last turbine in the main powerhouse is expected to start operating in January 2019.
At this moment, in addition to consolidating itself as the fourth largest hydroelectric plant in the world, it will be the largest fully national hydroelectric plant, since only half of Itaipu, with its 14 thousand MW, belongs to Brazil. The builders say that the 11 thousand (the other half is from Paraguay) Belo Monte will be able to supply the consumption of 60 million Brazilians. At the current cost, almost 32 billion reais.
But it will still be necessary to apply another billion reais to the two transmission lines, with more than two thousand kilometers in length, which will take energy to São Paulo, from there spreading throughout the country. For now, there is a limitation for adding energy to lines already in operation. The problem is that the transmission system, owned by the Chinese company State Grid with state-owned energy companies, is behind schedule and the budget is bloated – artificially, according to the Federal Court of Auditors.
All big enough to get in the way of stricter control of budgets, their executions and the use of these works – typically colonial.
* The Belo Monte plant was inaugurated today (05/05) by President Dilma Rousseff who, in overflight, took the photograph that illustrates this article. The photo was released by the Presidency of the Republic.
Lúcio Flávio Pinto is a journalist, sociologist, graduated from the School of Sociology and Politics of São Paulo. Editor of Jornal Pessoa, an alternative publication that has been circulating in Belém/PA since 1987. He recently launched the Amazônia Hoje website and the Cabanagem blog. Author of more than 20 books on the Amazon, including “War Amazon”, “Journalism in the shooting range” and “Against Power”. Lúcio Flávio is the only Brazilian journalist elected among the 100 heroes of press freedom by the international organization Reporters Without Borders.
