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And while they await those results - senior environmental officer Jeavon Hulse says that the sediments cause no real environmental threat and that we either choose to live with the turbid waters or without electricity.

Jeavon Hulse, Sr. Environmental Officer
“The results as we have them right now would show apart from that of the turbidity the water being normal. That is the results we have right now.

At this point in time, no matter what BECOL does, there will be a release of sediment. The only way to stop the sediment from being released, whether through the powerhouse or through the low level outlet is to close it down. That is the only way to stop it.

What we are seeing here as I mentioned is a natural process that is occurring; unforeseen, uncontrollable that has at present created a situation that we have not expected.

Because many times you find folks becoming very excited, easily excitable, and you would hear them say well, ‘bwoy mek we shut down the dam, slow it down. We want to stop that thing.’ Again is it really practical, particularly at a time where we are at when you look at the energy demands being placed on, well depending on how you look at it, the demon BEL, but you have a lot of demands being placed on the company.

The media houses would say the Department of Environment is sacrificing life, we don’t care about people, just for the sake of BEL and for light, everybody wants to watch cable at night. But in truth that is not really the case. Before like I said before we make any decision we need to look at the facts.”

Hulse says 40,000 acres of land in the Mountain Pine Ridge area was burnt in 2007 and that contributed to the high accumulation of sediments.

BECOL, which runs the chalillo dam wasn’t present at this afternoon’s conference but they did fire off a release in response to our story earlier this week with Candy Gonzalez. She accused the dam operator of intentionally pumping sediment filled water from the dam into the river. BECOL denies it saying that the company is not pumping silt into the river.

That however conflicts with what the Vice President of Operations Stephen Usher told Jules Vasquez last week when he explained that because the pumps for the turbine are located at the lower part of the dam’s retaining wall, the water being used and pumped out does have an abnormally high concentration of sediment because that’s what has accumulated at the bottom of the lake. As he explained it to us, it was not intentional, but it was an inadvertent effect of a unprecedentedly high volume of river sediment associated with upstream erosion.