Nei til utbygging av Nedre Otta! - No to damming the Otta river!

Dams have significantly impacted traditional agricultural development, ecological success of plants and animals, and most importantly, they interrupt the natural flow of nature. This dam directly effects not only the plants and animals, it effects the people who thrive because of the river. People who use the river to sustain their livelihood. We need to protect these natural beauties and not destroy them. Also, people enjoy recreational Whitewater Kayaking, Whitewater Rafting, Paddle Boarding, Canoeing, and Rafting and a Dam would destroy the ability for people to have that experience and be impacted by their surroundings. The river and the Whitewater rapids bring a lot of tourism to the area and enables excitement to people who come from all over the world. Thank you for not continuing to DESTROY NATURE....There is 9.25 Million Trillion gallons of water on this earth. It covers 70% of the earths actual surface. Less than 1% of this water is freshwater. At the rate that more than 7 Billion people are consuming water daily, we will run out of freshwater in the next 20 years. We don't want another river to end up like the Colorado River. The Colorado river has been dammed and diverted through out various parts of the river. In turn, this has caused the river to drop 130 feet since 2000. Geoscientists believe that with the way that the US is using "their" water, the Colorado will dry up in the next 40 years. Dear governments, consider the price you pay for a bit more electricity. Consider the way the demand is going to increase in the next 50 years (or however long you predict it will take until that dam is paid off). If the demand increases like currently expected, this dam is going to make no deciding difference to the power shortage problem. If you carry on like this you make the same mistakes european countries have made 30-60 years ago. They too were blinded by one-sided arguments to the eventual uselesness of these projects. Destroying this place would be a travesty to the entire world. The only thing dams are good at doing is making money for the foreign megacorporation that wins the bid for the contract. They are like giant hideous sculptures with reservoirs that fill with silt, inner workings that quickly deteriorate, costs that invariably prove higher than projected and benefits that invariably prove lower than projected, quickly erasing the thin margin of perceived benefit from the sales pitch. Better to put out a call for contractors to build an actual sculpture at an outrageously exorbitant price putting the host country in debt for generations. Then the contractors could at least have the creative freedom to make a giant concrete work of art instead of a giant concrete monolith that simply states: We heard lies and we believed them. We thought a wad of money would be better than a wonder of the world. We got ripped off and we welcomed it. Please do not do this. The effects of big dams on climate change are measured and big (methane from organic matter decomposition behind the dam). They have limited life spans. They ruin ecosystems. AND this one will ruin a tourism industry that is a strong economic force in the region. I for one am working HARD to save money to travel there and soak in the wonders. Please don't take this away from me, my children, and my grandchldren!

The social and environmental effects caused by damming are immeasurable. The displacement and changes faced by the effected communities that inhabit areas affected by damming is traumatic, impacting whole social organisations, health and economic patterns along with the loss of traditional ways of life and therefore marginalising whole cultural existence. It describes eight sub-processes that create the impoverishment caused by developments such as damming:

1-Landlessness, this is the main foundation of which people have built their productive systems commercial activities and livelihoods, the loss of both physical and man made capital occurs through this loss and change of land.

2-Joblessness, the loss of employment, that occurs through loss of land and change in the environment, unemployment and underemployment echo long after the physical change to the land and the relocation.

3- Homelessness, the loss of one’s home is temporary but the broader culture of placelessness results in the loss of a community’s space and identity.

4- Marginalization happens when groups loose their economic power, sliding further down the economic ladder and ending up living below the poverty line due to devaluation of the land and a change in the resources.

5- The decrease in health levels, which are a direct result of the relocation and change to the environment are huge - from disease, the change in lifestyle and diet, to the psychological trauma created by change and the devastating uncertainty of the future and one’s own identity.

6- Food insecurity and forced displacement will increase the risk of people falling into chronic food insecurity. A decline in crop availability and land to hunt are definite during displacement and change to the land. Hunger and undernourishment will therefore become long termed effects.

7- The loss of access to common property and assets belonging to the communities such as forests, water bodies, and grazing lands, represents a cause of income and livelihood that is undercompensated for.

8- Social disarticulation, the dismantling of community’s’ social structure, is an unquantified loss of social capital.