Environmental issues and site selection criteria for small hydropower projects in developing countries

This report provides guidelines for incorporating environmental concerns into SHPP prefeasibility and feasibility studies. The prefeasibility study process uses coarse-grained criteria to reduce a large number of potential SHPP sites to a much smaller number. Section I identifies four basic questions that must be satisfactorily answered by SHPP prefeasibility studies: Should development be stimulated in the area? Are available water resources adequate? Will protected natural areas be threatened? Is there local support for environmental protection requirements? During the feasibility study process, a relatively small number of candidate SHPP sites are examined in greater detail and the best selected for development. Section II discusses potential SHPP impacts (on, e.g., aquatic weeds and organisms, land use and development, wildlife, water quality, flood control, and sediment transport) and provides a checklist of information that should be gathered in order to judge the magnitude of these impacts at a given site. Appended is an 18-item bibliography.