Will The Three Gorges Dam Becomes China's Curse ?
When the construction of China's Three Gorges
Dam was completed in 2006, most Chinese citizens
must have hoped it was worth it the huge cost:
1.4 million people had to be relocated from
towns, cities, and villages to make way for the
enormous structure, which would supplement a
hungry China's growing energy needs.
But their prayers have not been answered.
Six years later, the government says a
further 100,000 people may be displaced over
the next few years, including 20,000 this year
alone, because of increasing landslide risks
in the area around the dam,
Reuters
reports.
The Three Gorges Project
is located at Sāndòupíng in the Xilingxia
gorge, one of the three gorges on the Yangtze
river.
It's one of the biggest
hydropower complexes in the world.
Wikimedia Commons/Le Grand
Portage/Rehman
The 600-foot high, 1.4 mile-long dam with 386
gates holds a reservoir that's about 400 miles
long, and the power generating complex
contains 26 turbines.
While official estimates
put the cost of production at $23 billion,
international experts believe it cost more
than double that.
The project took more
than a decade to complete.
Getty Images/China Photos
It was originally suggested in 1918 by Sun
Yat-Sen, but the scheme officially started in
1994 and finished in 2008.
It serves a purpose,
however — The dam generates more than 18,000
MW of power a year.
That's more than eight times the capacity of
the U.S.'s Hoover Dam and about three percent
of China's energy needs.
Additionally, it's
intended to stop the frequent flooding in the
region.
The project also
increased the amount of cargo transported
across the river to 50 million tons, triple
the maximum annual amount prior to the dam's
construction.
But the system has had
some major problems from the very get go.
About 1.4 million people were displaced when
construction began, and 13 cities, 140 towns
and 1,350 villages were submerged when the
reservoir reached its full capacity of 40
billion cubic meters (1,412.6 billion cubic
feet).
(Source: The
New York Times)
A further 100,000 will
be moved over the next three to five years
because of landslides and bank collapses.
The number of landslides
and other natural disasters has increased by
70 percent since the reservoir filled up in
2010.
Getty Images/China Photos
The enormous weight of the water in the
reservoir, coupled with the rise and fall in
its levels depending on the season, has made
the banks unstable, according to
the
BBC.
Some say it played a
role in the devastating 2008 Sichuan
earthquake, which killed 87,000 people, though
the government denies this.
1,300 archaeological
sites have also been submerged.
Getty Images/China Photos
Among those threatened are the irreplaceable
remnants of the homeland of the Ba, an ancient
people who settled in the region about 4,000
years ago, according to
CNN.
The dam may have
exacerbated China's 2011 drought.
Flickr/Euclid vanderKroew
While there is no concrete evidence, critics
say the dam altered regional water tables,
which led to residents downstream of Three
Gorges losing access to drinking water in the
drought from January-April 2011, according to
The
New York Times. China's Xinhua news
agency put the number of those affected at 10
million. It was widely considered the worst
drought in 50 years.
(Source: Nature)
The drought negated most
of the dam's plus points: ships were stranded
and central and eastern China faced a power
shortage.
Environmentalists say
the reservoir is accumulating silt and waste
from cities and industries.
Getty Images/China Photos
Over 265 billion gallons of raw sewage are
dumped into the Yangtze annually, which now
collects in the reservoir instead of being
flushed downstream and out into the ocean.
However, the government insists the new sewage
treatment plants have this under control,
according to
NPR.
The government finally
acknowledged the problems in 2011, five years
after Three Gorges was built.
The Chinese State Council said it knew about
some of the problems even before construction
began 17 years ago, while some other issues
have arisen since because of "new demands as
the social and economical situation
developed".
But despite this late admission, the plan
was always contentious. A third of Chinese
MPs voted against the plan or abstained.
But China still wants to
build more dams.
Getty Images/China Photos
There are plans to build a series of dams on a
section of the upper Yangtze which, combined,
will have a capacity more than twice that of
the Three Gorges Dam. But not only is this
region seismically active, the project could
deprive Three Gorges of water, according to
the
AP.
Other plans include possibly building dams
along the Nu River and the upper Mekong,
which would be fatal to the area's fragile
ecosystems and endangered species,
Foreign
Policy reports.
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