Any dam this size, in a country still playing technology catch-up, will develop problems that will take years of tinkering to get right, and in a society where the basics of modern civilization are still not fully apparent in the village lifestyles being displaced by it's construction, the power and technology flowing from it, may someday help bring into the 21st century.
China's showcase dam triggers landslides
The reservoir created by the huge Three Gorges project also traps pesticides, fertilizer and sewage.
By Tim Johnson - McClatchy Beijing Bureau
Published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, October 13, 2007
MIAOHE, China -- Earlier this year, on a slope far above the mighty Yangtze River, Qu Wanfu felt the earth give way. Terrified, she dashed into her house.
"The earth was moving down the hillside," Qu recalled.
Luckily, the landslide stopped, saving this village of about 50 households from careening into the muddy waters of the Yangtze, the largest river in Asia, in a gorge far below.
A few bends downriver, the Three Gorges Dam, said to be the world's biggest civil works project, spans a mile and a half across the Yangtze. Nearly a year and a half after it was completed, the government still touts the $26 billion dam as a showcase project that limits disastrous seasonal flooding and generates vast amounts of electricity.
But authorities now admit that the dam is generating major problems. It's created a huge -- and heavy -- reservoir pressing against the mountains along the Yangtze, making them more prone to landslides.
The deep reservoir stretches upriver about 370 miles, impeding the natural flushing action of the river and trapping pesticides, fertilizer and raw sewage. Downriver from the dam, water flows cleaner and faster, harming aquatic species adapted to sediment in the river.
Some landslides have sent walls of water more than 100 feet high crashing across the reservoir to the opposite shoreline, causing even more damage, Huang Xuebin, head of the Office to Prevent and Control Geological Disasters in the Three Gorges Reservoir, told the forum last month.
The environmental problems have proved especially nettlesome.
"The quality of the water is much worse than we expected, especially in the tributaries," said Weng Lida, former chief of the Yangtze River Water Resources Protection Bureau, a government agency, who now works for a regional trade group.
Many tributaries along the Yangtze are experiencing algae and aquatic blooms because the water flows have slowed markedly amid a buildup of pollutants, he said.
The amount of raw sewage pouring into the river has doubled this decade, and huge trails of flotsam commonly entangle its waters.
