A federal court and Brazil’s environmental agency ordered the Belo Monte hydropower plant to revise the Xingu River’s water-sharing plan, a decade after its debut, but a legal stay blocks enforcement of the ruling.The plant’s water flow has been subject to several complaints, as low water levels in the Volta Grande do Xingu have dried flooded forests and rock habitats, disrupting fish and turtle reproduction and threatening endemic species.“Increasing the amount of water is the only solution to restore this ecosystem,” says Josiel Juruna, coordinator of an Indigenous-led monitoring program documenting the impacts.
After 10 years of operation, the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant in Pará state has yet to resolve its most severe local impact: the reduction in water flow in the Volta Grande do Xingu. The 130-kilometer (81-mile) bend on the river in the Brazilian Amazon is rich in biodiversity and vital to Indigenous peoples and riverine communities.
Belo Monte is the largest hydropower plant in the Amazon and the second-largest in Brazil. Since construction plans began, local and Indigenous communities have been warning that the plant could disrupt the Xingu ecosystem and livelihoods. Ensuring sufficient river flow was a nonnegotiable condition of the project’s environmental licensing, but Belo Monte’s operator has invoked Brazil’s energy security to avoid reviewing the volume of water diverted from the Xingu River.
