Saving Iceland

The Kárahnjúkar Power Plant is the largest industrial development in Iceland’s history. Roughly 3% of the total area of Iceland, approx. 290,000 ha, will be impacted by the project, not including areas of secondary impacts, such as windblown dust, long-term erosion, downstream or coastal silt and soil deposits, alterations in groundwater characteristics in peripheral areas with resulting changes in vegetation and wildlife habitats. Read More

Corporate Watch

“Nobody can afford to allow the divine Icelandic dragon of flowers and ice to be devastated by corporate greed”

People in Iceland are calling for an international protest against the building of a series of giant dams, currently under construction in the eastern highlands of Iceland. The dams are designated solely to generate energy for a massive aluminium smelter, which will be run by the US aluminium corporation Alcoa and built by Bechtel.Not a single kilowatt of energy produced by the dams will go for domestic use. Alcoa is seizing the chance to relocate to Iceland after costs of producing aluminium in the US soared. Read More

Eleven courageous British activists visited the Icelandic embassy to voice their outrage at the building of the Kárahnjúkar dams.

One activist persuaded the secretary to open the “security” door, and while 4 others charged in, another locked herself by the neck to the main door with a D-lock. Three of the four inside the embassy were almost immediately arrested, and the fire brigade used bolt croppers to release the woman on the front door (she too was arrested). Police and staff thought they had cleared the building of intruders, until post-it notes started to appear on a window spelling out ‘NO DAM’. Investigating, they found that an activist had locked and barricaded himself inside an office. The fire brigade were asked to break in, at which point the activist came out willingly and was arrested, as were the others, for “trespassing on diplomatic premises”. The 5 were held overnight. Read More

the ultimate fraud 

Facts of interest circulated by members of NatureWatch to participants at the meeting of The International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy in Reykjavik 23rd September 2004

The Government of Iceland is presently damming muddy glacial rivers and building the gigantic power plant Kárahnjúkar (690 MW). The enormous main reservoir of 57 km2 will destroy an area of pristine wilderness and beauty. For months each summer, when the water-level is low, it will leave a huge area covered with a thick layer of powdery dust that will spread over a vast area. The dam will be filled with sediment in approximately 50-100 years, leaving irreversibly damaged land. Such dams are not eco-friendly. Read More

7 September 2004

Alcoa challenged to back Kyoto ratification.

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So writes the poet and protester Elísabet Jökulsdóttir, and sitting in the board room of Landsvirkjun at a table long enough to hold a state banquet, it is hard to disagree with who is responsible for Kárahnjúkar. The walls of the ‘president’s floor’ have portraits of the men who in former times have managed the national power company. Read More

It is now two years since the government gave the approvals that made way for the creation of a huge hydroelectric scheme in the Central Highlands at Kárahnjúkar. This paved the way for a subsequent deal with Alcoa for the building of an aluminium smelter in the coastal town of Reyðarfjörður.

WHAT DOES THE SCHEME INVOLVE?

The Kárahnjúkar project will consist of nine dams, three reservoirs, seven channels and sixteen tunnels. It will divert two large rivers, the Jökulsá á brú and Jökulsá í Fljótsdal, and several smaller rivers to the north of the Vatnajökull glacier, the largest glacier in Europe. The main dam will be highest rockfill dam in Europe, 190 metres high, 800 metres long and 600 metres wide at its base. This main dam will create a huge reservoir, to be called Hálslón, which will flood a wilderness area of 57 sq. km. 70 km of tunnels will carry water to an underground powerhouse, which will have a 690 megawatts capacity. Read More

Orion Magazine
March / April 2004

An important article which provides useful historical background.

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This historic action marks the beginning of Saving Iceland.

DON’T LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON ICELAND!

 

This was the message demonstrators at Tate Modern wanted to get across as Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson’s hugely successful ‘Weather Project’ exhibition – featuring a giant sun – came to an end.

The 25 demonstrators staged an “umbrella protest” against the ALCOA dam currently under construction in the Icelandic highlands which will see vast swathes of Europe’s last remaining wilderness flooded in 2006.

Interviewed in the Guardian newspaper on the 27/12/03 Olafur Eliasson himself stated that his “greatest fear is that US aluminium giant ALCOA is destroying the Icelandic highlands with the support of our government.”

The Icelandic government recently announced further plans for similar projects which, protesters say, will spoil much of Iceland’s world-famous pristine nature.

“The government want to turn Iceland into a heavy industry hell,” said one protester, Icelandic environmentalist Olafur Pall Sigurdsson. “These mega projects benefit nobody except the multinational companies who instigate and build them. ”

“This programme of building big dams in Iceland will drag us back into the 20th century when the rest of 21st century Europe and the US is busy dismantling environmentally unfriendly dams,” Sigurdsson went on. Read More

This morning a case was filed in the Reykjavík District Court, brought by natural scientist Hjörleifur Guttormsson, resident of the district Fjarðabyggð in East Iceland, against the multinational aluminium conglomerate Alcoa and the Icelandic Ministers of the Environment and Finance, concerning the proposed aluminium smelter in Reyðarfjörður, East Iceland. Supreme Court Attorney Atli Gíslason will prosecute the case on behalf of the plaintiff.

News release – PDF file