Lake Cachet

In environmental terms, research determined that because of the projected reservoir sedimentation in the Baker 1, the reservoir and downstream erosion would involve a major impact on banks, vegetation and fauna. Another aspect is that dam projects typically avoid calculating greenhouse gas emissions, specifically CO2, and HidroAysen was no exception. In this sense, the study found that the transmission line would be about 70% of the impact in this area, suggesting that mitigation would generate an alternative energy sources closer to their place of demand. The calculation comes to a total of at least 3 million 770 thousand tons of CO2 generated by the construction and operation of such reservoirs, while the transmission line north at least 8 million would produce 959 000 tonnes.

These estimates consider only the construction and transport, the carbon footprint of the materials used and the land use change (flooding, loss of sinks and storage of the product deforestation). In security to examine the possible changes in temperature by the greenhouse effect. Focusing on Lake Cachet 2 (protagonist of dissection or sudden GLOFs, for its acronym in English) with a temperature between 4 and 8 Celsius in summer, the maximum discharge was the range of 1200-2000 m3/sec. With a future increase of 3 the flow could increase by an additional maximum of 500 m3/sec. In these circumstances, the eventual rupture of the dam has a high level of risk to people living downstream, the situation being more complex than that of Tortel.

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