In Ecuador's Intag Valley, four villages are building a power plant they will own themselves

In the cloud forest of Ecuador's Intag Valley, Jorge Guachagmira is leading four rural communities in building their own 300-kilowatt hydropower plant on the Aguagrún River. The communities will hold 90% of it, in a valley that has spent three decades refusing to let others dig up its land.

Jorge Guachagmira presides over the Río Aguagrún Renewable Energy Production Association. He speaks for Cerro Pelado, Chinipamba, Nangulvi Bajo and Barcelona, the communities behind the plant they call HidroAguagrún. His idea of ownership is plain. "The owners won't be conventional corporations," he said. "We want the owners to be the people who live in the area."

The work has been done through mingas, the region's tradition of collective labour. Neighbours arrive and work together, and local builders and mechanics are hired first. By late August the intake system and the pipe were finished. The 60-square-metre powerhouse that will hold the turbine was about 30% complete. Nineteen families manage the project. They hope to finish by the end of the year.

It is a run-of-river plant, with no reservoir and no dam holding back the valley. The water takes its 100-metre drop through the turbine and returns to the river, whose flow stays as it was. The aim is to supply about 1,500 homes.

The two minority partners, Fundación Futuro, led by executive director Carolina Proaño, and Corporación Toisán, represented by Denis Laporta, provide funding and technical support. The land and the river, and most of the decisions, stay with the people who live beside them.

That matters in Intag. The valley lies in the buffer zone of Cotacachi-Cayapas National Park, and the forest around the Aguagrún holds 20 species found only in Ecuador and 16 threatened ones. Mining companies have wanted the copper beneath it since the 1990s. In 1997 residents burned a mining exploration camp near Junín. Years later a copper venture between Ecuador's state miner ENAMI EP and Chile's Codelco set up camp in Junín's community forest. In 2023 the Imbabura Provincial Court revoked its environmental licence. The court ruled that the project had violated the communities' right to be consulted and the rights of nature.

For years the valley has been known mostly for what it refused to allow. With HidroAguagrún, the people of Intag are building an alternative of their own. Half of whatever the river earns them will go back to protecting the forest around it.