PEOPLE, WATER AND WIND
The irrigation and hydropower Olmos megaproject in Peru aims to stimulate rural development. The project brings water from the Atlantic side of the Andes to the Pacific side through a tunnel in the mountains, to irrigate the arid Olmos Valley in the country’s northwestern region of Lambayeque and opened up 38,500 hectares of land for farming.
Peru’s former President Ollanta Humala inaugurated the project, which cost US$580 million — nearly a century after it was first proposed. It is estimated that the project created 40,000 direct jobs and around 200,000 indirect ones.
The initiative to divert the Huancabamba River that runs into the Atlantic in the mountains of the Piura region was first conceived in 1924 to improve the living conditions of people in Lambayeque, through integrated water, land and crop management. The addition of the hydroelectric component was suggested in the 1940s.
The water from the Huancabamba River is diverted by the Limon Dam into a 20-kilometre long and 4.8-metre wide Trans-Andean tunnel, to the other side of the continental divide.
There, the water joins the Olmos River and irrigates 5,500 hectares of land. Further down the river, hydroelectric power stations were built and generates 4,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year.
Then, finally, the water reaches the Palo Verde Dam — which has a capacity of 790 million cubic metres of water — and is used to irrigate additional 38,000 hectares of dry land. Today the land cultivates crops such as sugar cane, blueberries, grapes, aspargus and quinoa.
Many professionals is working in agribusiness firms that have begun to operate in Olmos. Thousands of new companies were formed to supply the great demand generated from this peruvian northern project. (source: Zoraida Portillo - www.inscidev.net)
But although the main aim is to boost food exports, small scale farmers still needing benefit. About 8,000 families, more than 40,000 people that have always lived there - farmer population who use the land but endure the lack of water -, have been asking for irrigation to be able to work on their plots for 90 years, but they have been left out of the project.
