Three Gorges Dam

OOSKA NEWS writer and Jean Yang
October 9th, 2007

Environmental experts are continuing to express concern about the ecological effects of the Three Gorges Dam, as the huge weight of water behind the dam has started to erode the Yangtze River’s bank in many places. This in turn has caused high variability in the water levels and led to a series of landslides.

“The shore of the reservoir had collapsed in 91 places and a total of 36 kilometres of shoreline had caved in,”said Tan Qiwei, vice-mayor of the city of Chongqing in Sichuan Province.

Huang Xuebin of the Headquarters for Prevention & Control of Geological Disasters, said the dam’sreservoir has produced waves as high as 50 meters. The waves have crashed into the adjacentshoreline, causing more damages.

Local government officials have acknowledged that the water quality of the Yangtze has drastically

decreased due to the sedimentation from the dam, threatening the safety of 50,000 local residents’ drinking water supply.

The pollution level has also caused the downstream growth of algae and led to a reduction of aquatic life in many rivers.

“We absolutely cannot relax our guard against ecological and environmental security problems sparked by the Three Gorges Project. We cannot win passing economic prosperity at the cost of the environment,” said Wang Xiaofeng, the director of the administrative body in charge of the dam.

In an unusual turn of events, Chinese government officials have been frank about the environmentally destructive characteristics of Three Gorges Dam. Their admissions come less than a month before the ruling Kuomintang holds its five-year national party congress.

“The government knows it has made a mistake,” Dai Qing, a vocal environmental critic of the Three Gorges Dam project, told The Times. “Now they are afraid that the catastrophe that they cannot prevent will spark civil unrest. So they want to go public before the troubles start.”

The $25 billion USD dam project has been compared to the Great Wall of China in scope. It is among the world’s biggest hydro-electric projects, with the capacity to produce 18,000 megawatts of power, 20 times more than the Hoover dam in the United States. The dam also is intended to deter floods in the basin of Yangtze River.