22 May 2006 By James Millar
IT is one of the past 100 years’ most spectacular feats of engineering, a source of wealth and symbolises the power of the Chinese state over nature itself, but environmentalists warn that it will bring nothing but misery.

The $25 billion (€19.5bn) Three Gorges dam, which was completed on Saturday, is the world’s largest hydropower project.

The 7,400-foot long expanse of concrete spanning the Yangtze River is expected to generate 18 gigawatts of hydropower, about 10% of China’s needs, and tame the floods along the waterway.
“The Three Gorges dam is excellent proof of what China can accomplish,” said vice-president of the China Yangtze Three Gorges Project Development Co Cao Guangjing. “This project will serve to inspire the Chinese people.”

One final benefit touted for the project is that it will elevate the Yangtze for hundreds of kilometres inland, allowing ocean-going vessels to travel as far as the enormous but little-known metropolis Chongqing.

This will, planners hope, help open up China’s underdeveloped west, which has in many ways missed out on economic reforms largely because of its isolation from overseas markets.

However, it will change dramatically the appearance of an area of outstanding natural beauty, destroy historic sites and comes with a heavy human cost.

The new reservoir will occupy the present position of the scenic Three Gorges area, between the cities of Yichang, Hubei and Fuling. About 1.2 million people will be displaced from their homes by the time it is fully operational.

Water began pouring into its reservoir on June 1, 2003. However, several generators still have to be installed and the dam is expected to become fully operational in 2009.

Friends of the Earth (FoE) estimates that when the dam becomes fully operational, the 663-kilometre reservoir created by the dam will have drowned 13 towns, 4,500 villages and 162 archaeological sites.

The environmental group also warned: “Sometimes people are being moved out by truncheon and bulldozer because they refuse to leave their home for fear of not being rehoused. Human rights violations are massive and brutal.”

“Resettlement will determine whether the Three Gorges project is a successful one or not,” president of the Three Gorges Project Development Corporation Li Yongan told reporters last week.

“If they are dissatisfied, people can report to the local government.”

However, petitioners say it is the local governments that are the problem, pocketing some of the €2.4bn Mr Li said has been spent on resettlement.

“The dam is having a titanic social and environment impact,” FoE said.

FoE said the dam was 50% more expensive than originally estimated and the project was stained by corruption.

The group pointed to evidence that the dam was already having a serious environmental impact.

It referred to a study by scientists at East China Normal University in Shanghai, published in the US journal Geophysical Research letters in March, which said that in 2004, the Three Gorges dam had reduced the supply of sediment to the Yangtze delta to 35% of the norm.

As a result, the tidal wetlands around Shanghai are eroding swiftly, damaging the coast’s fragile ecological systems and curbing the city’s ability to expand, the scientists warned.

Supporters of the Three Gorges say the scheme will control chronic and sometimes deadly flooding of the Yangtze. They also argue that it will help meet China’s energy needs with a renewable source that will not add to greenhouse gases that drive global warming.

Although the building of the project will increase green house gas emissions in the short term, the State-controlled People’s Daily claims that it could reduce China’s annual coal consumption by 40 million to 50 million tonnes, thus reducing the discharge of two million tonnes of sulphur dioxide and 10,000 tonnes of carbon monoxide a year.

However, critics say the claim about flood control is unproven and contend that silting may eventually jam the dam’s turbines.

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