Justice

Citizens and state at odds over Chile’s Rucalhue dam

The Biobío Basin’s latest hydropower project is uprooting protected vegetation, amid allegations of insufficient prior consultation of local residents
<p>Forest on the banks of the Biobío river, in the Chilean region of the same name. A new hydroelectric project, the fifth plant on the river, has been met with opposition from communities and environmental experts (Image: Rainer Lesniewski / Alamy)</p>

Forest on the banks of the Biobío river, in the Chilean region of the same name. A new hydroelectric project, the fifth plant on the river, has been met with opposition from communities and environmental experts (Image: Rainer Lesniewski / Alamy)

Fernanda Purrán was raised alongside the Biobío River in central Chile. She says the river was “part of our family”, but the arrival of hydropower in the region in the 1990s destroyed that relationship. She says that subsequently, the levels of the waters they swam in would rise at any moment, with no warning as to when a dam’s floodgates would open. “There have been years of uncertainty and a lot of pain, a lot of anguish.”

Now, another hydropower plant is on the horizon in Biobío. The Rucalhue project is located less than a kilometre from its namesake village, and 10 kilometres from the communes of Santa Bárbara and Quilaco. The project involves the construction of a power plant and a reservoir. The latter’s volume will be more than 7 million cubic metres, created by flooding 139 hectares of land.

The 90-megawatt (MW) project would become the fifth hydroelectric plant on the Biobío, one of Chile’s main rivers, and joins the Ralco (689MW), Pangue (466MW), Angostura (323MW) and Palmucho (34MW) plants.

Satellite image of river
Satellite image of the Biobío River, showing the Pangue dam and reservoir in 2025 (Image: Airbus / Maxar Technologies / CNES via Google Earth)

Although an environmental resolution in 2016 granted the Rucalhue plant a mostly favourable qualification, the project had until recently failed to secure construction permission. This is because two protected species of plants, the guindo santo shrub (Eucryphia glutinosa) and the naranjillo tree (Citronella mucronata), are found within the area of its potential footprint.

In October 2023, Chile’s National Forestry Corporation (Conaf) classified the new hydropower plant as being of “national interest”. A year later, Conaf approved the project’s management plans, which was the final hurdle. Construction works – which include the felling of guindo santo shrubs and naranjillo trees, as well as disrupting the associated ecosystems – can now begin.

The USD 240 million project is being overseen by Rucalhue Energía, a Chilean company owned by the China International Water and Electric Corporation (CWE). A subsidiary of the China Three Gorges Corporation, this is CWE’s first project in Chile.

The plant is part of the government’s Biobío Industrial Strengthening Plan, which was launched in response to the September 2024 closure of Huachipato. Once Chile’s biggest steel plant, Huachipato turned the coastal city of Talcahuano into one of the Biobío region’s main industrial centres.

Currently, 13 hydropower plants operate in the Biobío Basin, mostly built in the 1990s. The basin extends for about 380 kilometres and the area generates about 38% of Chile’s hydropower.

These power plants have long faced resistance from communities living in the area, including Indigenous peoples, who claim they have destroyed both local ecosystems and the area’s social fabric. Residents of the Alto Biobío commune were displaced by the nearby Ralco dam in the early 2000s. “The people who were relocated from Ralco, and moved further downstream, no longer have communication with the people who live in Alto Biobío,” claims Purrán. “They kind of formed their own communities – they live in their own spaces, and act individually and silently.”

According to Juan Pablo Boisier, a researcher at the University of Chile’s Center for Climate and Resilience Research (CR2), these hydropower plants are not just important for renewable electricity generation, but also for water supply. He acknowledges, however, the environmental and social impacts associated with the necessary landscape modifications.

Citizen participation and prior consultation

The local community’s main criticisms of the Rucalhue project have been the lack of civic participation and the failure to carry out a comprehensive consultation with Indigenous people. According to Javier Arroyo, a lawyer and member of the Latin American Observatory of Environmental Conflicts (Olca), this constitutes a breach of international commitments signed by Chile, including Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization – or the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – as well as the Escazú Agreement, the Latin American environmental treaty enshrining rights to environmental information and justice.

An Indigenous consultation for the project did take place, concluding in 2016, but the process was accused of being flawed and manipulated to favour the project, with social and environmental organisations calling for a fresh consultation. In the time since, the guindo santo and naranjillo, both classified as “vulnerable”, were granted protections under a 2023 law meaning special authorisation was required for their felling.

The Ministry of Social Development was asked by Conaf to advise on the need for a new consultation, but for reasons unknown, this did not happen. Conaf ultimately decided to authorise the project in any case.

“In this process, two negligences occurred,” claims Arroyo. “The first is that Conaf issued the declaration of national interest, without even having [received] a report from the Ministry of Social Development on whether it was necessary to carry out the Indigenous consultation. And the second is the profound delay on the part of the Ministry of Social Development in pronouncing… on the possible Indigenous consultation, and also its lack of consideration [of the consultation] to date.”

Dialogue Earth spoke to Bernardo Reyes, president of the NGO Forest Ethics Foundation (FEB), about these alleged oversights. “The lack of transparency and citizen participation in the decision-making on the project is unacceptable,” says the activist.

The management plan

Conaf spokespersons told Dialogue Earth that the management plan approved for the dam “complied with all the technical and legal requirements [necessary] to be processed”. They point to its compensatory measures, such as the rehabilitation of grasslands with native species (including the naranjillo and guindo santo flora) and the restoration of degraded ecosystems.

Dialogue Earth attempted to contact Rucalhue Energía for comment but did not receive a response. On its website, the company says that it will “intervene” in the cases of 392 naranjillos and 139 guindos santos – that is, cut them down – but will also plant 1,334 and 545 of each species respectively. It also claims 43,268 “companion species” will be planted.

The project lends itself to abuse; anything can be understood as being in the national interest. We don’t have an energy-generation problem for them to declare this as such
Pamela Poo, public policy director, Ecosur Foundation

The political scientist Pamela Poo has a gloomy view of these proposals. Poo, who directs public policy and advocacy for the sustainable development NGO Ecosur Foundation, criticises Conaf and claim it has a role in influencing the policies of Chile’s president, Gabriel Boric: “It is a clear example of how the government is willing to sacrifice the environment for economic gain, without considering the long-term consequences for local communities and the wider ecosystem.”

Poo also criticises the “national interest” framing of the project: “It lends itself to abuse; anything can be understood as being in the national interest. We don’t have an energy-generation problem for them to declare this as such,” she notes. “We are mortgaging the future of ecosystems and future generations.”

Community resilience

Some locals have sought to stop the project, obstructing and even occupying associated riverbanks to prevent logging and the passage of heavy machinery. They allege violence and an absence of effort from the company to create spaces for dialogue.

“A group [of locals] spent five months on the site where the company is now working, preventing them from carrying out their first construction,” says Purrán. “The [police] response was to violently evict them… The same thing happened again later, with injured comrades.”

The actions of the company, says Reyes, are generating multiple impacts that go beyond the construction of the dam alone: “We are not only talking about economic or environmental impact. The multiple cultures of the area are also being affected. There is a profound conflict with the project, with a lack of transparency, logging of native species, lack of participation and fragmentation of communities.”

Construction of the Rucalhue hydroelectric project is underway and is expected to be completed within three years. Meanwhile, the affected local communities, who describe having grown tired and less united, are once again having to live with a hydroelectric project on the Biobío River.

Purrán says many of the affected people no longer have the mental strength to act: “They say: ‘do whatever you want, please leave me alone and do whatever you want and please don’t bother us.’ We have heard that response… there are also other people who have been opposing, but they are in the minority.”