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Brazil’s hydroelectric dam boom is bringing tensions as well as energy
Posted by Guardian: Juan Forero on February 12th, 2013
Guardian: When it is completed in 2015, the Jirau hydroelectric dam will span 8km across the Madeira river and feature more giant turbines than any other dam in the world. Then there are the power lines, draped along 2,250km of forests and fields to carry electricity to Brazil's urban nerve centre, São Paulo.
Still, it won't be enough. The dam and the Santo Antonio complex that is being built a few kilometres downstream will provide just 5% of what government energy planners say the country will need in...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Brazil’s hydroelectric dam boom is bringing tensions as well as energyBolivia’s silver mountain loses its lustre as report warns of risk of collapse
Posted by Guardian: Juan Forero on October 2nd, 2012
Guardian: The tunnel grew darker and more claustrophobic, the air harder to breathe. But Daniel Cruz trudged deeper into the bowels of a mountain where thousands of miners toil and countless more are entombed, casualties of a centuries-old lust for silver.
Behind him followed five foreign tourists, here to see an anachronism in the 21st century, medieval mining in the Rich Mountain of Potosí. This cone-shaped peak is at any given moment home to as many as 16,000 shirtless miners, straining in dark caverns...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Bolivia’s silver mountain loses its lustre as report warns of risk of collapse