Lake Péligre (french: Lac de Péligre) is the second largest

lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...

Haiti Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and ...

, and is located in the

Centre Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricity ...

department Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...

. It was created as a result of the construction of the Peligre Hydroelectric Dam on the

Artibonite River The Artibonite River (Spanish: '' Río Artibonito''; Haitian Creole: ''Latibonit'') is the longest river in Haiti, and the longest on the island of Hispaniola. It is also the second-longest river in the Caribbean, behind the Cauto River in Cuba. F ...

in 1956–1957. The project was designed by the

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers , colors = , anniversaries = 16 June (Organization Day) , battles = , battles_label = Wars , website = , commander1 = ...

and financed by the Export-Import Bank of the United States. According to

Tracy Kidder John Tracy Kidder (born November 12, 1945) is an American writer of nonfiction books. He received the Pulitzer Prize for his ''The Soul of a New Machine'' (1981), about the creation of a new computer at Data General Corporation. He has receiv ...

's book ''

Mountains Beyond Mountains ''Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World'' (2003) is a non-fiction, biographical work by American writer Tracy Kidder. The book traces the life of physician and anthropologist Paul Farmer with par ...

'',

Brown & Root KBR, Inc. (formerly Kellogg Brown & Root) is a U.S. based company operating in fields of science, technology and engineering. KBR works in various markets including aerospace, defense, industrial and intelligence. After Halliburton acquired Dress ...

was a contractor in the Péligre Dam project. There is a lot of controversy surrounding the dam. Much of the benefit of the dam's construction has gone to a small group of wealthy individuals, at the expense of the poor farmers who utilized much of the land that is now submerged. The

extreme poverty Extreme poverty, deep poverty, abject poverty, absolute poverty, destitution, or penury, is the most severe type of poverty, defined by the United Nations (UN) as "a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, includi ...

those displaced families have faced has largely been untold, but is often mentioned in the talks of Dr.

Paul Farmer Paul Edward Farmer (October 26, 1959 – February 21, 2022) was an American medical anthropology, medical anthropologist and physician. Farmer held an MD and PhD from Harvard University, where he was a Harvard University Professor, University ...

; "if you saw with peasant eyes, the scene looked violent and ugly, a lake that had buried the good farmland and ravaged the highlands."

References

; notes ; sources * Peligre Centre (department) {{Haiti-geo-stub