Dam Builders Go Abroad as Business Dries Up in U.S.

Founded nearly a century ago by one of the builders of the Hoover Dam, the engineering company of Mead & Hunt is about as American as American dam-building gets.

Except the Madison, Wis.-based company doesn’t build dams here anymore. Its future is in India, Pakistan and Central America.

The U.S. dam-building industry--bedeviled by growing environmental opposition and faced with the fact that American rivers are already crowded with dams--has virtually closed up shop in its home country.

The number of dams built in the United States in the 1990s is lower than any decade since 1900-1910. For the first time, lawmakers and federal energy officials have approved the dismantling of major dams in Washington state and Maine. College engineering professors say they now focus their students on dam upkeep. “I don’t think we can say we’re training students to build dams anymore,” one says.

Meanwhile, U.S. companies like Mead & Hunt have shifted their work to developing countries. And some have begun questioning the ethics of working in countries where need for power and water is strong and environmental law is weak.

“What do American companies do to stay in business? This is what they do,” said professor Marcelo Garcia, who teaches the environmental hydrodynamics of dams at the University of Illinois. “It’s sad, very sad, at least to me.”

The argument is hardly cut and dried.

Big dam projects wreak havoc on river ecosystems, bury cultural treasures and decimate native fish populations. People often must be relocated, and opponents contend that dams can increase the likelihood of flooding and leave irrigation land salty and water undrinkable.

But there also is opposition to other power projects; whether it’s oil, gas or nuclear, there are environmental drawbacks to each.

Even as dam builders and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers--the federal dam-building arms--acknowledge the damage dams do, they say developed countries like the United States have no business preaching to countries like China and India, where the majority of people still live without running water or electricity.

“I didn’t find people in the Third World fighting over water quality and fish,” said Ashok Rajpal, Mead & Hunt’s executive vice president. “They don’t have the luxury of fighting over these environmental things.”

Right or wrong, U.S. dam builders can’t ignore the debate for one main reason--financing.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank and the World Bank have both adopted environmental guidelines since 1990 and say they fund fewer and fewer dam projects--including the massive Three Gorges Dam in China, from which both banks backed away very publicly.

Andres Liebenthal, principal evaluation officer for the World Bank, says as a result of the environmental impact of large dams--and problems with moving people to accommodate them--”dam construction is slowing down worldwide.”

While both banks say they will continue to support dams that meet their new environmental guidelines, U.S. companies say the controversy and high cost of environmental regulations have had their effect. Firms that used to build dams now focus on highways and airports, while others have turned into dam-maintenance specialists. Financing is dicier.

“It’s obvious if you were relying on government funding, the project’s not going to be built,” said Larry Stephens, executive director of the Denver-based industry group U.S. Committee on Large Dams, an affiliate of the Paris-based International Commission on Large Dams.

Even private banks are warier of dam projects, said Ed Carter, a member of the board of directors of Chicago-based dam-building giant Harza Engineering Co.

“The policy today seems to be that smaller is better,” Carter said. “I think many people who aren’t pro-hydropower attach a more negative view on large reservoirs, so a smaller reservoir which would mean a smaller dam would be a project that would have a smaller impact.”

The situation is even trickier for the federal government, which has gone from being a world leader in dam projects for much of this century to speaking out against the damage such projects can do to river ecosystems and fish.

The Bureau of Reclamation and the corps both stepped away from Three Gorges because construction projects were “inconsistent” with the administration’s domestic policy, said Richard Ives, chief of Reclamation’s international affairs office.

Despite the public shift, both Reclamation and the corps still consult on dam projects overseas, and “there’s no national policy saying to take dams out of our toolbox,” said Steve Stockton, engineering chief of the corps’ civil engineering department.

So does the U.S. government support dam projects? “I don’t know,” Stephens said.

“There’s been some evolution in that discussion,” Ives says of Reclamation’s position on dam projects. “Before, it looked like we walked away from anything with the word dam in it . . . before, things were done in smoke-filled back rooms.

“Now we’re looking at each project for its merits and whether it’s consistent with our mission.”

Ives and Stockton say developing countries will build dams regardless, so consulting at least helps them avoid mistakes made by U.S. dam builders decades ago. Some environmentalists share that belief.

“We’re grappling with it in Laos,” Alan Rabinowitz, Asia program director for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Union, said of the proposed Nam Theun Two Dam. “The feeling is, it’s going to be built anyway. The World Bank is the best hope to have any environmental concerns taken into account.”

That’s not the position of the International Rivers Network, a Berkeley, Calif.-based environmental group, which argues that dams are not only destructive but a poor investment.

“Is it appropriate for the U.S. government to provide assistance that in no way, shape or form would ever be considered in the United States?” said Owen Lammers, executive director of the network. “If another government wants to build this, why should we help them?”