THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
OF PROFESSIONAL ENVIRONMENTALISTS (NAPE) REPORT
ON THE PROPOSED BUJAGALI POWER DEVELOPMENT PROJECT

On the spot assessment on Sunday 28th February, 1999

Number of people that went:- 28.

A visit at Rippon Falls and Bujagali falls: what was observed.

• If the dam is constructed at Bujagali, the fails will be submerged compared to what happened to the Rippon falls
• The Islands at Bujagali will also be submerged and people will be deprived of their farm land where many of them get their livelihood.
• Vegetation and other Bio-diversity will be lost for instance, the crabs, the birds the plants and other spices of trees which are peculiar to such a place will be lost for ever.
• Tourism industry will be affected {the tourists will not be coming to such a place only to see common features which could be found elsewhere.
• Rafting industry will also disappear, and Bujagali is already a well known world site for rafting. It is the only place in Uganda where you can find such a resource of its kind. Bujagali falls are the only ones of their kind in the whole Country, and once destroyed there is no any other alternative.
• No tourist will come to see a man-made lake, because where tourists come from, there are many man made lakes.
• No tourist will come to see an HEP station because where tourists come from there are thousands of such installations. If the second largest freshwater lake in the world
• L. Victoria is not known to attract hordes of tourists, how can a dam do so? Instead tourists come to see the source of the Nile

What the local people said

1. "Why build another Dam when there is already one nearby at Owen Falls Dam and yet we don't have electricity ! Is there any guarantee that we will get electricity from the new Dam at an affordable price? We hear that even those people who are richer than we are finding it difficult to pay for electricity. How sure are you that we poor people will be able to pay for the electricity once a new dam is built?"

2."The Company A E S (Nile Independent Power) promised us jobs, but are those jobs going to be there forever? Are the jobs going to benefit our children and grand children? Are those jobs empowering us to do better or to enslave us forever and ever and ever?"

3. "We are being displaced and we wonder where we are going to get another land? With the little compensation which AES has promised us, ranging from 500,000/= (Five hundred thousand only) -1,000,000/= (One million only), can we be able to buy another land with that little money, and where? How will our loss of our environment be compensated for?"

4. When "economic" valuing was being done, land was not valued. The AES people only valued coffee, eucalyptus trees and the permanent houses: "What about those of us who didn't have permanent houses, coffee or eucalyptus trees but had other actual crops and houses which were not permanent?"

5. "How will our culture be compensated? When the Kyabazinga was being installed, we heard that he was brought to Bujagali, at the very site of the