Iceland, Norsk Hydro, Environmental impact.

Valgeir Bjarnason (valgeir@holar.is)
Tue, 07 Dec 1999 18:03:05 +0000

Help Sanetters,
It is nice to live in a country with a lot of natural and sustainable
energy like we do in Iceland. We have big glaciers with lot of rivers and
waterfalls and also geothermal energy. We have harnessed part of these
sourses so now we are the world greatest producers per capita of
electricity. A big part of this energy is used by heavy industry like
aluminium and steel.
When the rivers and waterfalls are harnessed for power plants big resorvars
must be build and big land areas are covered with water.
After few days Althing (our parlament) will decide to build a new
hydropower plant in eastern Iceland. This will be build for Norsk Hydro´s
new aluminium plant. This aluminium plant will first have annual production
of 120.000 tonns and is expected to increase its a.p. to 480.000 tonns. For
that a big part of our (and Europas) biggest wilderness will be affected.
In the beginning a 46 sq km lake must be made by sinking a big vegetated
area (named "Eyjabakkar") at the north east corner of Icelands biggest
glacier "Vatnajökull" which is important for reindeer and pink footed
geese. This is going to be done without any survay on environmental impact
on this area. This is not only concerning Icelandic environmental societies
but also international like WWF. Norsk Hydro said to WWF that environmental
impact survay would not decrease their interrest in building the aluminium
plant but to the Icelandic government Norsk Hydro says that all delay will
be negative for their interrest!
This power plant is not big enough for this 120.000 tonns aluminum plant,
another must also be built to fulfill its needs and that is just 25% of the
final size so this is just the beginning. Next our (and Europas) biggest
waterfall "Dettifoss" will be harnessed and big and beautiful canyons will
be filled with water.

I do not know if this is the right place to ask for assistance. There are a
lot of protesting going on in Iceland. However the majority of our members
of Althing (parlament) are going to vote for this plant. The case is now by
the commitee for industry and energy of the parlament. The chairman there
is Hjalmar Arnason hjalmara@althingi.is and the minister for industry and
energy is Finnur Ingolfsson finnur@althingi.is.
You could e-mail them and simply aske "Why not environmental impact survay
for Eyjabakkar?"
They have both asked for the peoples opinion on the case.
Thank you,

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