The dam was approved, but about one-third of the delegates refused to endorse the plan -- an astonishingly low approval rate for China's usually compliant rubber-stamp parliament. Some delegates said they were blindsided when the Three Gorges Dam suddenly appeared on the NPC's agenda, without advance notice or discussions about the project, according to a edition of "Yangtze!
Yang Xinren, a delegate from Jilin province in northeastern China, was quoted by the book as saying : "The majority of the delegates are not fully informed of the technical aspects of the project.
So no matter how we vote, we vote in blindness. Why is the dam so controversial? One of the most controversial aspects of the mega-project was its enormous cost for villagers who had lived for centuries on the banks of the river.
To make way for the dam's massive reservoir, about 1. Building the Three Gorges Dam displaced more people than the three largest Chinese dams before it combined. The reservoir submerged two cities, towns and 1, villages along the river banks. Residents of Fengjie, in southwest China's Chongqing, watch the demolition of buildings in their town on November 4, , to make room for the Three Gorges Dam's resevoir.
Displaced residents have complained about inadequate compensation and a lack of farmland and jobs after relocation. Many have accused local governments of embezzling resettlement funds and using excessive force to quell protests. In , the Chinese government acknowledged that some of the funds were embezzled or misused. Many also faced a reduction in living wages.
The dam has also had a serious geological impact. Chinese officials and experts admitted at a forum in that the Three Gorges Dam had caused an array of ecological ills, including more frequent landslides, China's state news agency Xinhua reported at the time. The water in the reservoir saturates and erodes the base of the cliffs, and the fluctuation in water levels changes the weight of the reservoir and the pressure on the slopes, destabilizing the shoreline, geologists say.
Water gushes out for the first time through the Three Gorges Dam on June 11, The first disaster came in , shortly after the reservoir started to fill for the first time. As the water reached meters feet , landslides began to occur. A few weeks later, on a tributary of the Three Gorges, a large chunk of a mountain split off and slipped into the river, killing 24 people, destroying houses and capsizing over 20 boats.
The dam, which sits near two major fault lines, has also been blamed for a surge in earthquakes in the region. Scientists argue that the weight of the large reservoir and the permeation of water into the rocks underneath can trigger earthquakes in regions already under considerable tectonic stress.
According to a study from the China Earthquake Administration, in the six years after the reservoir was filled in June , 3, earthquakes were recorded along the reservoir; only 94 earthquakes were recorded from January to May Another major concern is the blocking of sediments. By cutting the flow of the Yangtze River, the dam has retained huge amounts of silt, which not only dampens its flood control capacity by filling the reservoir, but also causes significant erosion downstream.
And finally, the discovery of 80 large cracks on the Three Gorges Dam's concrete face, just days after the reservoir was filled for the first time in , didn't help to alleviate concerns about the dam's safety. Officials said at the time that the cracks were not a threat to the dam, but could cause leaking if not fixed, according to Xinhua. For those who remembered the collapse of 62 dams in Henan in , amid heavy downpours during a typhoon, it was of little comfort.
That event killed more than 26, people by the official count -- though other estimates were several times higher. This year, as the floods worsened, rumors over the Three Gorges Dam's deformation have resurfaced, drawing fierce rebuttal from state media.
But in , the Chinese government admitted the Three Gorges Dam had created a range of major problems. Changing attitudes. Beard, the Commissioner of the US Bureau of Reclamation, declared "the dam building era in the United States" to be over, at an international conference. The US would be finding alternative ways to solve water problems.
The costs of such projects exceeded original estimates and many benefits were never realized, Beard said. Shankman, the geologist at Alabama University, said many dams in the northwestern coast of the US were actually removed because they blocked the migration of fish from the ocean up the rivers, causing their populations to drop. In the southeast of the country, upstream dams in the mountains created environmental problems, driving fish species to extinction, causing water pollution, and the recession of coastlines due to the blocking of sediments.
The dam is located 44km from the city of Yichang in Hubei province. This point is at the end of a series of steep canyons that form a km reservoir, with an average width of 1. Its capacity is Related transmission and distribution installations are linked to the three regional grids taking power from the Three Gorges Dam, forming a single system from the coast to the border of Tibet. The project consists of a concrete gravity dam with a spillway in the middle.
The powerhouse and non-overflow section are stationed at both ends of the dam. The length of the dam is 2, The project has 34 generators, which includes 32 main generators. The other two are power generators with a capacity of 50MW each. Initial works began in The main equipment orders for the 9,MW first phase were placed in Fourteen of 32 Francis units of MW each were brought online on the left bank of the river between and In the second phase, 12,MW units were added on the opposite bank, increasing the total to 18,MW.
During the second phase, the dam was built to a height of 87m. A m-high permanent ship lock with 14 turbines was built on the southern bank.
In the final phase, the dam was raised to a maximum height of m and an additional 12 turbines were installed on the northern bank of the Yangtze River. A single way one step ship lift system was built at the project complex. The maximum lifting height is m and the maximum lifting weight is 11,t.
The spiral casing began on 26 May The spiral casing installation was finalised for the generating Unit 27 in May This completed the spiral casing of all six underground generating units. The first 14 generators became fully operational in October , generating 9,MW at a water level of m.
The first No. All 24 generators and two power generators were switched on in June They produced 16,MW of power, less than the maximum capacity of 18,MW. The plant reached its full capacity for a short duration in August due to elevated upstream water levels and river flow during floods.
The dam will disrupt heavy silt flows in the river and could cause rapid silt build-up in the reservoir, creating an imbalance upstream and depriving agricultural land and fish downstream of essential nutrients. Environmentalist and political opposition to the Three Gorges Dam was intense. The most emotive issue was the forced relocation of 1. Yet it is often those critical voices which are most urgently needed during the kind of rapid modernization on which China has embarked. In September , for example, the White House solicited U.
An example was the catastrophic collapse in August of two large water-conservancy projects in Henan Province, the Banqiao dam and the Shimantan dam. As Appendix III of this report reveals, the Banqiao and Shimantan dam collapses were to a large extent man-made disasters, resulting from flawed water-control policies. The government should establish a mechanism for investigating allegations of abuse and allow unhampered access of international human rights and humanitarian organizations to the affected areas, including to prisons, to verify that complaints of abuses are being adequately addressed and that no one is detained for speaking out against any aspect of government policy concerned with the dam.
The government should also provide full information about the legal status and whereabouts of those already known to have been arrested in connection with protests against the dam, and should immediately release anyone detained merely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association. Private foreign investors should insist on firm and verifiable guarantees from the Chinese government that human rights will be respected before committing themselves to the project.
It should also allow unrestricted debate more generally on the merits of the project. The Chinese government should provide full information about the legal status and whereabouts of the members of the Democratic Youth Party reportedly detained in connection with their protests against the Three Gorges project in May in Kai County, Sichuan. The Chinese government should establish an independent commission of experts charged with the task of monitoring and supervising the progress of the Three Gorges population-transfer program.
The commission should reflect the main social constituencies and principal areas of specialist knowledge involved in the resettlement project, and should be endowed with sufficient powers including the rights to investigate suspected abuses by government officials, publish its findings independently and submit complaints to government or judicial authorities to enable it to safeguard the interests of those being resettled.
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