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In Ecuador’s Intag Valley, communities build their own micro-hydropower plant
In Ecuador’s Intag Valley, communities build their own micro hydropower plant. Originally published by Mongabay.
By Aimee Gabay · 2026-09-06T05:01:41.634Z
In Ecuador’s Intag Valley, one of the major watersheds https://www.imbabura.gob.ec/phocadownloadpap/K Planes programas/PDOT/Cantonal/PDOT%20COTACACHI.pdf that supply the country’s Imbabura province in the north, 19 families from four communities are developing a 300 kilowatt kW run of river hydropower plant — a project https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/28581731 hidroaguagrun one pager/?embed=1 that generates electricity by capturing the Aguagrún River’s natural flows without the construction of a large dam or water storage reservoir. Engineers say this makes them less environmentally impactful. The families, which are from the communities of Cerro Pelado, Chinipamba, Nangulvi Bajo and Barcelona, own 90% of the HidroAguagrún project https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/28581731 hidroaguagrun one pager/?embed=1 . Registered as a business since 2022, half of the revenue raised from selling electricity to the national grid will go directly into a trust for conservation activities, such as the protection of cloud forests. The idea to create a small hydropower plant came from a general concern among the families about water availability in the region and the impact of the climate crisis, said Jorge Guachagmira, the president of the Río Aguagrún Renewable Energy Production Association, which represents the 19 families of the micro basin and surrounding areas. “We live in a remnant of the natural world, and our daily activities are affected by the expansion of the exploitation frontier, such as agriculture, livestock farming, logging or deforestation of natural ecosystems,” he told Mongabay in a video call. “By expanding the agricultural frontier, we are generating greater water insecurity, water instability and climate instability.” Ecuador, which depends on hydroelectric power generation for 78% of its electricity https://www.trade.gov/country commercial guides/ecuador electric power and renewable energy , has faced a severe energy crisis https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human dynamics/articles/10.3389/fhumd.2025.1607564/full in recent decades, driven by successive droughts. In 2024, this led to daily blackouts lasting up to 14 hours and affected essential services, public health and social wellbeing. The Intag Valley’s cloud forests and its numerous rivers and streams are part of one of the world’s most biodiverse regions https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2019.01328/full , the Ecuadorian Chocó bioregion, which covers more than 200,000 hectares 494,211 acres . Local communities have long raised concerns https://news.mongabay.com/podcast/2025/06/every day i have to think about mining carlos zorrilla on 30 years of fighting for intag valley/ about large scale mining projects https://es.mongabay.com/2026/03/ecuador biodiversidad valle intag riesgo licitacion minera/ in the region, and the deforestation, water contamination and biodiversity loss caused by these industries. HidroAguagrún is projected to make $120,000 a year https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pbi2KkrsN CwWS9V21A5Vx xAmWMEq6M/view?usp=sharing from the electricity sold to the general national energy grid and it expects operations and maintenance to cost $40,000 a year. According to a document https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pbi2KkrsN CwWS9V21A5Vx xAmWMEq6M/view?usp=sharing provided by corporate responsibility nonprofit Fundación Futuro, the project has so far increased income and improved skills across 17 rural businesses, and 28 leaders and youth have been trained in bringing sustainable energy to their communities. It has also created 11 permanent jobs in operations, monitoring and ecotourism, and 345 people will benefit from the profits received over the 30 years of the plant’s life. ‘Locals are the owners’ From day one, the families insisted that ownership of the project would forever remain in the hands of local families. “The owners won’t be conventional corporations,” said Guachagmira. “We want the owners to be the people who live in the area.” Companies are usually disconnected from the environmental impacts of large scale river infrastructure projects, often not knowing where the water even originates, he said. But when local communities hold a majority stake, there is a greater awareness within the company about the need to protect and monitor the water and communities can directly benefit. Once the project gained momentum, residents formed mingas, a traditional system of collective, voluntary labor, to build the infrastructure. Technical and financial support came from nonprofit the Corporación Toisán and Fundación Futuro, which each hold a 5% stake https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pbi2KkrsN CwWS9V21A5Vx xAmWMEq6M/view?usp=sharing in HidroAguagrún and provided more than half of the funding. Local builders, transporters, mechanics and monitors were the first choices for construction. “The minga requires willingness, camaraderie, friendship, commitment and everyone looking toward the same goal,” Guachagmira explained. “When you’re in the minga , it’s also a space for integration, socialization and the exchange of experiences and ideas.” Decisions about the project were voted on in community assemblies or general meetings. The project is near completion, constructed largely by local residents with technical support from specialists. “This is essential for its success,” said Denis Laporta, representative for alternative energies at Corporación Toisán, in a video call. “It’s not a solution conceived from behind a desk, but rather one that combines elements to allow for direct construction management. This is a significant advantage because it allows for the integration of local people, small businesses, service providers, food vendors and accommodation providers, creating a local economic ecosystem.” Laporta outlined the project’s three phases to Mongabay. The first phase, now complete, involved the building of an intake system to divert the water needed to power the turbine. Unlike a conventional, large scale hydroelectric plant, this run of river design does not require the construction of a dam. The second phase, which is also complete, involves building a pipe that channels the water toward the powerhouse where the electricity is generated. To minimize landscape and environmental degradation, the community decided to build an 800 meter 2,625 foot underground pipe, Laporta said. The project has now entered its third and final phase, which is hydrostatic testing to check the water system. In an interview with Mongabay in early August, Laporta said the 60 square meter 646 square foot powerhouse was 30% complete. The facility will house the plant’s essential equipment, including the pump, motor, valves and dismantling gaskets. Laporta said the families hope to complete the structure by the end of 2026. Once complete, to be able to eventually sell energy to the national grid, the plant needs to first be integrated into the local grid. The area currently relies on single phase electrical power, typically used for residential purposes, which cannot support the plant’s output. Laporta said that HidroAguagrún is currently negotiating an agreement with the regional electricity company to co finance the necessary upgrade. Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution https://pdba.georgetown.edu/Constitutions/Ecuador/english08.html and 2015 Organic Law of the Public Electricity Service LOSPEE https://www.gob.ec/regulaciones/ley organica servicio publico energia electrica lospee opened the door for the Popular and Solidarity Economy EPS to participate in the country’s energy sector. The Constitution, for example, establishes that while the state is responsible for strategic sectors like electricity, it can also delegate these activities to private economies and community and solidarity economy enterprises, which has worked in HidroAguagrún’s favor. In addition, Ecuador has recently updated its regulatory framework to promote distributed electricity generation https://www.trade.gov/country commercial guides/ecuador electric power and renewable energy — a decentralized approach that shifts focus away from massive, cross country transmission lines and redirects it toward regional resilience. This was in response to the country’s energy crises and severe droughts that have affected its centralized hydroelectric plants. “Those two factors make HidroAguagrún and other HidroAguagrún related projects interesting for the regional electric company,” said Laporta. “It helps them reduce their dependence on energy that they sometimes have to buy from abroad.” Carolina Proaño, the executive director of Fundación Futuro, told Mongabay via WhatsApp that the organization has identified five additional sites in Intag where the project can be replicated, each capable of producing 300 kW to 1 megawatt MW of electricity. It is also developing financing models to accompany each new community. “We are currently working on the second one,” Proaño said. “These are communities that have already organized themselves, and their challenge is generally access to economic capital. Technical and organizational assistance is required, but the most complex aspects have already been achieved through the self management of the inhabitants.” Laporta told Mongabay that there are several conditions that need to be met to make a project of this kind possible. This involves community willingness and cohesion, water availability, strong alliances, access to capital, and technical capacity that thinks beyond profits and instead prioritizes limiting environmental harm. When selecting a site, he said he recommends prioritizing a location where a small plant can be integrated seamlessly into the natural landscape, without draining local water sources. He also emphasized the need to protect vulnerable aquatic ecosystems from collapsing, especially during the drier summer months. Laporta said it’s crucial to avoid the idea that because something is technically possible, it should be done. It might be so, he said, but at what social and environmental cost? Banner image: The Río Aguagrún Families Association, together with the technical team of the Toisán Corporation and the Futuro Foundation, during a day of construction of the hydroelectric plant in the Aguagrún river basin. Image courtesy of Fundación Futuro. Women weave a culture of resistance and agroecology in Ecuador’s Intag Valley https://news.mongabay.com/2024/04/women weave a culture of resistance and agroecology in ecuadors intag valley/ Ecuador court upholds ‘rights of nature,’ blocks Intag Valley copper mine https://news.mongabay.com/2023/03/ecuador court upholds rights of nature blocks intag valley copper mine/ Ortiz Prado, E., López Cortés, A., Suárez Sangucho, I. A., Salazar Santoliva, C., Vasconez Gonzalez, J., & Izquierdo Condoy, J. S. 2025 . Facing crisis: How Ecuador’s energy shortages threaten public health. Frontiers in Human Dynamics, 7 . doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fhumd.2025.1607564 doi:10.3389/fhumd.2025.1607564 https://doi.org/10.3389/fhumd.2025.1607564 Pérez Escobar, O. A., Lucas, E., Jaramillo, C., Monro, A., Morris, S. K., Bogarín, D., … Antonelli, A. 2019 . The origin and diversification of the Hyperdiverse flora in the choco Biogeographic region. Frontiers in Plant Science, 10 . doi: 10.3389/fpls.2019.01328 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2019.01328 FEEDBACK: Use this form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfZAR8uRBoWCipFG c7GYD0AWdn qKvk8Z0DwpgU3bhi6Zifg/viewform to send a message to the author of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page.