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When China's Three Gorges Dam is completed in the year 2010, it will be the
most powerful hydroelectric dam in the world. It costs an estimated $70
billion USD. There have been ongoing concerns about the environmental and
social costs of the project, but in recent weeks, China's state-controlled
media have been unusually outspoken about whether it's such a good idea
after all. As other infrastructure projects fail around the country, many
now worry that the dam may not hold. NPR's Mary Kay Magistad visited the
Three Gorges Dam site and sent this report.
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MARY KAY MAGISTAD reporting:
With three and a half years to go until the Yangtze Valley is flooded,
construction on the vast Three Gorges Dam continues full speed ahead.
Thousands of workers are busy pouring concrete, moving earth, leveling
surfaces. Busloads of tourists come to watch the spectacle, even on a gray,
rainy morning. They huddle on a lookout platform, their umbrellas a splash of
red and yellow against a gloomy sky. The director of the Three Gorges Dam
project, Lu Youmei, says this work may be fun to watch, but it's far from
easy to do.
Mr. Lu Youmei: (Through Translator) For project construction, we are going to
encounter many challenges that have not been encountered before in the history
of human beings.
MAGISTAD: Everything about the dam is on a massive scale. It is to create a
reservoir 400 miles long and 600 feet deep, displacing some one and a half
million people. Lu is more concerned about the technical issues, such as the
temporary shiplock that failed during last year's massive floods. That stopped
traffic on the Yangtze River for more than two days. Foreign engineers who
have visited the dam also caution that the bedrock is weaker than originally
thought. They worry that this could lead to high rates of seepage and a weak
foundation. There are also reports of cavities in the dam wall. Patricia
Adams heads the Toronto-based environmental group Probe International.
Ms. PATRICIA ADAMS (Probe International): Large cavities, I believe about 90
square feet, and they are large enough that they're causing concern. I believe
that in one section of the dam, the engineers considered blowing it up so that
they could recast it and then decided against that because they felt that it
might destabilize the rest of the dam that's been built. And I believe there
are other problems, all to do with casting the concrete with the quality of the
concrete and I guess the way that it has actually formed, that it may not be
strong enough and it is not up to standard.
MAGISTAD: China's state council actually voted against the Three Gorges
project 10 years ago, but then, in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square
crackdown, the man who had called in the troops, then-Premier Li Peng,
pushed through the plan as a monument to Chinese pride. Environmentalists
and human rights activists around the world have been lobbying ever since
to stop the project or at least scale it back.
Besides their concerns about the dam's structural integrity, the critics are
also alarmed by the shoddy construction of many roads, bridges and new towns
being built to replace those that will be submerged.
(Soundbite of crowd)
MAGISTAD: Fengjie is one such place, a river town with steep slopes leading
down to its busy docks. It's to be relocated to a site higher up a hill on the
other side of the river. Two years ago, as workers were laying foundations
there for new buildings, there was a landslide. Luckily, no one was hurt or
killed. Locals like 60-year-old Jao Gien Wan(ph) are suspicious about why it
happened.
Ms. Jiao Jianwan: (Through Translator) Some people called it a landslide,
but we don't think it was. We think it was caused by corruption because
the local officials didn't put enough money into building a strong
foundation to support the buildings.
MAGISTAD: All along the Yangtze, there is evidence that a sudden surge of
money into poor counties has been too much for local officials to resist.
New roads have broken apart, bridges have collapsed, killing dozens. In
many cases, investigators have found that contractors were forced to use
inferior materials because they had to pay such large bribes to local
officials. This has made Premier Zhu Rongji furious. He calls such
projects tofu construction because they hold up about as well as tofu.
The implications for the Three Gorges Dam are obvious and sobering, but project
director Lu Youmei insists that people need not worry.
Mr. Mr. Lu Youmei: (Through Translator) For those projects with severe
quality problems, the main reason for failure is that the construction of
those projects did not comply with normal procedures that should be
followed. With the Three Gorges Dam, that's simply not the case.
MAGISTAD: Premier Zhu is still worried. He has called on the Three Gorges
Dam project to start using foreign inspectors, since local Chinese
inspectors are more susceptible to being bought off. `Make no mistake,'
Zhu has told those in charge of the dam, `the weight of responsibility on
your shoulders is like the weight of a mountain, and if anything goes
wrong, the cost in lives and in China's prestige will be beyond imagination.'
-Mary Kay Magistad, NPR News, Yichang, China.
c 1999 National Public Radio ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Three Gorges Campaign
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way
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e-mail: threegorges@irn.org web: http://www.irn.org
Tel: 510.848.1155 ext. 317 Fax: 510.848.1008
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