THE VUOTOS DAM: A DISASTER FOR NORDIC JUSTICE

In reply to a health survey in 1991, the inhabitants of the Vuotos region of North-East Lapland in 1991 made the following statement:

This affects us all. Here we have freedom, rivers full of fish, meadows full of fields of potatoes and beds full of flowers, the River Kemi, its banks, a most beautiful corner of Finland, our home. Does society really need to drown it all? For twenty years we have been asking this question.
The Vuotos is another step towards the subjugation of Lapland's nature to the wastefulness of our times, which we can see no end to.

The memory of the largest police operation in the history of Norway is still fresh in the minds of the people of Finnmark. Over 1000 police were called in to break the nonviolent protest of the indigenous Sami people of Lapland and environmentalists against the building of the Alta dam. Drastic measures and punitive fines were imposed. That was twelve years ago.

Is a second Alta now looming in Finland? Every year, on 23rd June, people come in boats - either their own or borrowed - from all over Finland to the little village of Savukoski in North Lapland, to take part in a two-day rowing trip as a peaceful demonstration on the River Kemi against the proposed Vuotos Dam.

The River Kemi is the largest river in Finland, and its natural state has been altered over the past forty years by the construction of numerous hydro-electric dams. Only the River Ounas, protected by law, and the upper reaches of the Kemi have been able to retain their natural beauty. Compared to the destruction of a unique natural landscape, the 35 megawatt capacity of the planned 240-square-kilometre reservoir is meagre. The ensuing damage to the environment would be a catastrophe.

Farms, woods rich in wildlife, extensive wetlands, the breeding grounds of thousands of birds, important grazing lands for reindeer, as well as lakes, ponds, streams and 40 kilometres of the impressive banks of the River Kemi with their teeming colonies of sand martins will all be drowned.

After approximately twenty years of bitter opposition by the local population to the dam project, in 1982 the government decided to cancel the project on the grounds of economic unviability and its harmful effects on the environment. This decision should have been binding upon future governments too.

At the same time, parliament voted unanimously to allocate an annual sum of money for the regeneration of the area, which had been blighted by years of uncertainty. Many families who had moved away returned. Decades of insecurity gave way to hope for the future. New farms were set up, farmsteads were made over to the next generation, clear-felled woodlands in the area of the proposed reservoir were reforested, the region was connected to the National Grid, and new roads and a bridge over the Kemi were built.

The state-owned Kemijoki Power Company, one of the driving forces in the plan to build the dam, nevertheless ignored the decisions of both government and parliament and started a new advertising campaign for the Vuotos project:

'Jobs for local people'
'Generating clean energy'
'A clear blue paradise for anglers and holidaymakers'
'Only when the dam is built will the conflicts end'.

But these seductive arguments are illusions.

The dam would only provide less than 200 jobs for just a few years, and these at the price of 100 in forestry and traditional reindeer herding.
The shallow swampland of the reservoir would become saturated with phosphorus, equivalent to the daily phosphorus level of the untreated sewage of a town with 40,000 inhabitants, which would flow into the already heavily polluted Baltic Sea. The flooded wetlands would give off carbon dioxide and methane, which until now have been held latent in the plants. To speak of clean energy in the face of such noxious emissions is unacceptable.
AT LOWATER:
Up to 75% of the area of the reservoir would become a slimy, muddy, swamp dotted with rotting stumps, where the ecological balance necessary for fish to survive would have been destroyed for the foreseeable future. In addition, fishing would be forbidden for 15 years because of high mercury levels. Is this a clear blue paradise for anglers and holidaymakers?

The claim of the Kemijoki Company that only the building of the dam would end the thirty-year-long wrangling over the Vuotos Project is no doubt designed to convince those affected that there is no alternative to the dam, and to reinforce their feeling of powerlessness and make opposition to the project seem pointless.

After a conservative government was elected in 1991, the old political morality was swept away. The decision of the previous government to put an indefinite moratorium on the project was forgotten. All the effort that local people had put into regeneration of the Vuotos region was disregarded. Hannele Pokka (Centre Party), Minister of Justice and formerly an opponent of the dam, now pleaded in favour of it. But it was the Trade and Industry Minister, Kauko Juhantalo (Centre Party) who was the most ardent supporter of resurrecting the supposedly dead and buried history of the Vuotos, shortly before he was stripped of his ministerial post for abuse of power and - uniquely in Finnish history -'also made to give up his seat in Parliament.

In spite of a study by the independent state economic research unit which pronounced the project economically unviable (without even considering its environmental impact), in 1992 Parliament granted the Kemijoki Power Generating Company a licence to file a tender for the construction of the dam with the North Finland Water Conservancy.

The people of the area round the dam felt betrayed by the way they had been treated by the government. They have been exhausted by the renewed years of insecurity and uncertainty over the effects of the dam. Many have sold their land to the power company and moved away. Only the strongest continue to fight against their seemingly all-powerful opponent.

The situation is grotesque. On the one side is ranged the powerful state-owned Kemijoki Power Company with its top lawyers to represent the company's interests; on the other side are the defenceless inhabitants of the Vuotos region, crippled by misinformation, intimidation and immense pressure.

Many of the dam's negative effects have been disregarded without question. What is sufficient compensation for the grief felt when a farm that has been in your family for generations sinks beneath the waves, or a whole lifetime's work is drowned? What price a splendid riverscape replaced by the muddy shore of a reservoir? How can one grasp the disappointment and bitterness of people who were enticed back to the area with subsidies, and now nevertheless see their years of work ending up under the waves of the reservoir?

In the light of the worldwide declaration by industrialised nations at the Rio and Berlin conferences on environment and climate change to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in order to avoid global warming, it is irresponsible towards neighbouring countries to complete this uneconomic dam project with its environmentally damaging consequences and carbon dioxide and methane emissions which also contribute to the greenhouse effect. Now that Finland belongs to the European Union and has recently joined the Council of Europe, it is keen to show its concern for the environment. This must be shown by deeds, not words.

The Vuotos dam project is of such economic, environmental and humanitarian importance that, like nuclear power, its future should be decided in Parliament and not by a regional water authority.

Undoubtedly the best solution would be if the new Finnish parliament elected in March this year put a stop to the project and protect 0 the upper sections of the River Kemi and the Vuotos region by law, thus bringing this case to a happy conclusion.

Then the affected populations would have to be compensated for their losses and the years of stress that this project has brought about. Only then will justice have prevailed.

Harald Helander, july 95
Civil enginer

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