Air Pollution

The Bakun Hydroelectric Power Dam project is owned and developed by Sarawak Hidro Sdn Bhd, a fully-owned unit of the Minister of Finance Inc, Malaysia (MOF Inc). During the construction of dam, The Sarawak Conservation Action Network (SCANE) has learned that Sarawak Hidro Sdn Bhd, the operator of the Bakun Hydroelectric Power Dam project, is in the process of clear-cutting 80,000 hectares (200,000 acres) of rainforest set to be flooded by the dam. The contracts for clear-cutting of forest have been commissioned to some contractors at the beginning of the construction. SCANE was told that one of the conditions as stipulated in the contract is that the contractors and/or its sub-contractors, agents and/or workers are required to do burnings on the cleared and felled forest, without which they would not be fully paid for the work done and/or their contract would be terminated. After few months of the construction, large tracts of forest have already been cleared and felled within the Bakun dam reservoir area. Fires were reported at different locations and sites in the area. In certain sites, where the fires were not being able to completely razed the felled trees, logs and debris, their workers are asked to gathered all the logs and reduce to ashes. SCANE was told that those workers who set the fires were not aware at all whether any permits for open burning had been issued by NREB as they merely followed the directive of Sarawak Hidro Sdn Bhd.

This massive dam project had contributed to a smoky haze blanketing parts of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore. Large carbon dioxide gas (CO) or greenhouse gas was released during clearance of the forest. High level of haze was reported around the Sarawak areas. The residential areas around the dam have been plagued by haze. Huge scale of carbon dioxide gas leads to greenhouse effect and increase the global temperature. While the projects supporters say that dams are a source of clean energy, a spate of scientific studies has shown that large dams produce large-scale carbon dioxide and methane emissions from the rotting of vegetation in flooded forests. Furthermore, in the dam's first few years of operation, the reservoir has experienced high nitrogen loading, because the dam developers did not clear the vegetation located behind the dam. The surrounding land upstream is also used for industrial agriculture such as palm oil plantations, whose chemical runoff has deposited nitrogen-heavy sediment into the reservoir. As a result, the Bakun reservoir has become highly acidic, which has heavily corroded the four turbines already installed in the powerhouse and eroded the surrounding soil and vegetation on the slopes of the reservoir. The potent methane emitted by the reservoir can be smelled kilometers away. These released greenhouse gases have led to air pollution.