Environmental Impact assessment of Gilgel Gibe III Dam
The Gilgel Gibe III Dam is an under construction 243 m high roller-compacted concrete dam with an associated hydroelectric power plant on the Omo river in Ethiopia. Once completed it would be the largest hydroelectric plant in Africa with a power output of about 1870 Megawatt (MW), thus more than doubling total installed capacity in Ethiopia from its 2007 level of 814 MW.[1][2] The Gibe III dam would be part of the Gibe cascade, a series of dams including the existing Gibe I dam (184 MW) and Gibe II power station (420 MW) as well as the planned Gibe IV (1472 MW) and Gibe V (560 MW) dams. The existing dams are owned and operated by the state-owned Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation, which is also the client for the Gibe III Hydroelectric dam.
As of February 2011, according to the project company the project was 41% completed and the completion of the dam was tentatively scheduled for July 2013. Full commissioning is scheduled for June 2013 after the reservoir will have filled and the hydroelectric plant will have been completed.[1] Local and international environmental groups expect major negative environmental and social impacts of the dam and have criticized the project's environmental and social impact assessment as insufficient. Because of this and accusations that the entire approval process for the project was suspect,[3] funding for the full construction cost has not yet been secured, as the African Development Bank has delayed a decision about a loan pending a review of the dam's environmental impact by its compliance review and mediation unit which in August 2009 accepted a call from NGOs for such a review.[4]
In August 2010 Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi vowed to complete the dam "at any cost", saying about critics of the dam that "They don’t want to see developed Africa; they want us to remain undeveloped and backward to serve their tourists as a museum."[5]