by Rod Hughes

In a perfect example of the right hand not knowing the doings of the left one, the national power and light company (CNFL) invested $4 million to buy land for the construction of a dam ruled not feasible by its parent company, the Costa ican Electrical Institute (ICE), the daily paper La Nacion revealed today.

ICE pulled the plug on the dam project 18 kilometers north of San Ramon but not before CNFL’s investment. ICE is the power and light company’s principal stockholder. Since 2003, CNFL had been urging the construction of the dam, to be roughly the size of the currently existing 132 megawatt producing Cachi reservoir, which produces enough power for 100,000 homes.

The completed Balsa Superior project was to have cost about $300 million and to have had 25 kilometers of expensive tunnels. The dam at Pirris near Turrialba, by contrast, has only 10.5 kilometers of tunnels but produces the same megawattage as Balsa Superior was to have generated. Said Pedro Pablo Quiros, ICE’s CEO, where so many tunnels are needed, it means there is less water available.

Yet, the project would have collected water from six rivers and CNFL engineering estimates optimisticly put the reservoir size at equal to Cachi. Quiros summed up the possible lack of generating flow this way: “It was sensible to stop something that lacks reasonable viability from the risk analysis point of view. This was the conclusion without blame nor glory.”

Quiros said that CNFL would have to sell the property so that it would not be (pardon the expression) money down the drain. “These projects are so expensive,” he added, “that $4 million must not be an excuse to say, ‘better we go ahead (with it.)’”