In the heart of a dense tropical jungle that is the home to wild elephants and 28 indigenous groups, heavy machinery shudders from the depths of a vast mountain while hammers pound on steel tunnel walls.Teams of workers clad in rubber boots, threadbare shirts and hard hats are digging a 2-mile hole in the remote Nakai Plateau that will soon serve as a reservoir drainpipe. It is part of the largest infrastructure plan ever attempted in this impoverished Southeast Asian nation.
The Nam Theun 2 project is a $1.45 billion, 1,070-megawatt dam that is expected to earn $2 billion in revenue for Laos over the next 25 years by selling more than 90 percent of generated electricity to energy-hungry Thailand, beginning in 2009. The profits will be divided among investment companies from France, Thailand, Laos and Italy. After 2034, all revenue will go to the cash-strapped government - one of the world's few remaining communist states.
The dam is the largest of a series of hydropower projects designed to spark development in landlocked Laos. Ten dams are under construction, backed by foreign investors, with 70 more under consideration. The government says the Nam Theun dam will help eradicate poverty by 2020.
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