REPORT #132 Nov 1999
BEL HONCHOS RESPOND TO DAM DEBATE!


Produced by the Belize Development Trust

There is a good interview with senior management of BEL in the newpaper. These guys are obviously well versed in the technical engineering aspects of conventional electrical production and delivery. But when they start crying about a draft report from general Electric on the dam business, they leave me shaking my head in pure wonder!

True they cannot afford to experiment, which is why for years, I have pushed the USA concept of a power distributor purchasing electrical power from many small private producers selling their off time surplus power. Or even private electrical producers going into business to sell electricity to BEL. This avoids the necessity of a bumbling bunch of bureaucrats trying to produce electricity with experimental schemes at taxpayer expense and failing at it.

But when I look at the serious face on that young fella Robert Usher and read what he is saying, I really think the Government of Belize, or BEL should buy him a computer with FREE internet access. Most of the different types of power production are on the internet in one country or another. It doesn't take a genius to read the information highway and get an electrical production education equal to a Masters Degree nowadays, by any interested amateur.

There are loads of methods of producing power in Belize, in both small and large scale size. Not around the clock, but certainly helpful in sharing the load at different times. The problem in the last 15 years in Belize has been the BEL monopoly and a provincial uneducated attitude among bureaucrats defending their turf and politicians listening to arguments they are not mentally capable of comprehending, or finding solutions to. You don't need outside draft reports, nor experts. There are plenty of retired type foreigners in Belize with engineering backgrounds that could supply electricity to the BEL grid as a private enterprise commercially. Belizean youth would pick up on it real quick with a couple of good examples that show a profit. This is where tapping the venture capital and risk capital market of private enterprise comes in. So long, as government people are running a monopoly, there will be no change. They themselves cannot take the risks to try something new, or different on taxpayer money. But private enterprise can, with the goal of a profit down the line. Robert lost me, when he started quoting large foreign company reports. That stuff is nonsense! Not applicable to the small scale of Belize.

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