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DAM-L Three Gorges Probe: February 14, 2001 (fwd)
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Subject: Three Gorges Probe: February 14, 2001
THREE GORGES PROBE
February 14, 2001
Chinese officials alarmed at looming environmental crisis
at Three Gorges dam, internal documents reveal
Dam will not provide reliable power or control Yangtze
floods. "Never, ever let the public know this," warns
eminent Chinese scientist
[Link to PRESS RELEASE]
February 14, 2001 - Three Gorges Probe has obtained
leaked correspondence between China's top leadership that
reveals growing alarm over the threat of unmitigated water
pollution and other environmental destruction in the Three
Gorges dam reservoir. The correspondence also reveals that
officials know the dam will not provide its promised flood
control capacity and that Three Gorges power will be
unreliable and probably expensive.
The leaked documents include an April 1, 2000 letter from
Zhang Guangduo, the eminent Qinghua University professor
and principal examiner of the Three Gorges Project's
feasibility study in the 1980s on the dam's environmental
impacts. In the documents, Professor Zhang pleads to the
man in charge of building the Three Gorges dam, Guo
Shuyan, to find money to address a looming environmental
crisis in the reservoir area of the dam. He estimates $37
billion is needed. Professor Zhang wrote his urgent request
after meeting with officials from the Environmental
Protection Bureau of Chongqing, which is now responsible
for 75 percent of the reservoir area and 85 percent of the
people to be resettled by the dam. Professor Zhang
discovered in his meetings Chongqing's Environmental
Protection Bureau knows very little about the state of
industrial wastewater and domestic sewage flowing into the
Three Gorges dam reservoir, and has insufficient money to
build the necessary treatment plants. Professor Zhang also
expressed alarm at the Bureau's inattention to the harm
caused by local people who are busy building new homes on
the slopes of the 600 kilometre-long reservoir. "Our
discussion with them caused me to worry tremendously
about the conservation and management of the reservoir
environment," his letter states.
The new super-municipality of Chongqing -- which was
created in 1997 to appease dam-affected Chongqing -- is
estimated to annually discharge more than one billion tonnes
of industrial wastewater and 300 million tonnes of sewage
into the site of the future reservoir, of which only 28 percent
and 8 percent respectively is treated. In addition, each year,
about 21.7 million tonnes of garbage are dumped around the
reservoir area, which is flushed into the Yangtze during the
rainy season.
In a rare exposure of internal bureaucratic tension over the
Three Gorges dam, the Environmental Protection Bureau of
Chongqing's vice-director defends his agency, saying that
the Changjiang Water Resources Commission (formerly the
Yangtze Valley Planning Office), should have worked out a
deal with the new municipality of Chongqing to address this
problem. The vice-director implies that the old city of
Chongqing, which was chronically starved of funds while
China's leaders debated the decision to build the Three
Gorges dam for decades, should not be blamed for being
unprepared to address the environmental crisis.
One month after receiving Professor Zhang's letter, Three
Gorges Project Construction Committee Director Guo
Shuyan, obviously disturbed by the scale and pressing
nature of this problem, visited the professor, who had just
been released from hospital. During their meeting, Professor
Zhang elaborated on his concerns. His comments were
transcribed and circulated to vice-premier Wu Bangguo,
Premier Zhu Rongji, and to dam proponents, including
former premier Li Peng and Lu Youmei, general manager of
the China Yangtze Three Gorges Project Development
Corporation and the vice-director of the Three Gorges
Project Construction Committee.
Professor Zhang expressed his frustration at not feeling
"free to speak" about his concerns about the Three Gorges
dam. "Perhaps you know that the flood control capacity of
the Three Gorges Project is smaller than declared by us," he
said to Director Guo. "The research [showing that the
dam's flood control benefits are inadequate] has been done
by the Qinghua University," and the "Changjiang Water
Resources Commission has also admitted this is true."
Professor Zhang proposed that the threat of floods be
addressed by lowering the water level in the Three Gorges
reservoir to 135 metres, which would adversely affect
shipping on the river. "But keep in mind," he said, "never,
ever let the public know this."
Lowering the reservoir level to provide flood control would
also compromise electricity output in summer, he explained,
arguing that Three Gorges power would need to be
supplemented by thermal -- oil, gas, and coal -- plants.
Professor Zhang then lamented the situation at the US$3.43
billion Ertan dam, built upstream of Three Gorges on a
tributary of the Yangtze with $1.8 billion in loans from the
World Bank and completed in 1998. "The price for
hydropower electricity generated by the Ertan Power
Station is so expensive that nobody is willing to buy it," he
stated, adding that "customers in China would rather die
than buy Ertan's electricity."
Professor Zhang's statement also provided rare insight into
international tensions over the dam. In 1944, the eminent
U.S. engineer, John Savage, visited the Three Gorges site.
He recommended that a dam be built at Three Gorges and
suggested the American government assist the construction
of it with a US$1 billion loan. Zhang, who was a friend of
Savage's and called him "a great engineer and a wonderful
person," nevertheless disagreed with Savage and urged the
then-Guomingdang government not to build the dam. "I felt
it was impossible to do this because there were no
customers for the hydro electricity," he said. His concerns
were ignored, the Guomingdang government decided to
proceed with the dam and asked Zhang to return from the
U.S., where he was living, to head up the project. "I went
back and devoted myself to it," he explained to Guo.
Because of the war with the Japanese, the project was
shelved. In 1984, the American government resumed its
support for the Three Gorges dam, providing technical
assistance until 1993 -- a year after the Chinese National
People's Congress approved the project amid
unprecedented internal opposition -- when it declared that it
no longer believed the dam was economically or
environmentally feasible. Professor Zhang, it seems, was
offended by the reversal of positions. The U.S. initially
encouraged the Chinese government to build the dam.
Zhang disagreed but was pressed to support it. Now the
U.S. has backed away from the dam, leaving Zhang and
others to take responsibility for it. Professor Zhang puts this
reversal of position down to "a political factor," a veiled
reference to human rights concerns, and complained bitterly
in his meeting with Guo that he had "suffered a gross insult"
from the United States.
Zhang also expressed worry, and perhaps guilt, at having
convinced his scientific colleagues in the Chinese Academy
of Sciences to endorse the project, despite their concerns
that it would harm the environment. Now, he explained to
Guo, foreigners in the West, are criticizing the project,
especially for the environmental damage it will do. Not
wanting these foreigners to be proved right and Chinese
scientists wrong, he stated, "this is why I am feeling
particularly anxious about the Three Gorges Project's
environmental protection," adding that "we should put
everything right with respect to the environment."
Professor Zhang derides spending money to preserve
archeological treasures while mitigation for the growing
environmental calamity remains starved for funds. "In my
view, it does not make any sense to put money on the
preservation of the Yushiliang [the White Crane Ridge, a
1,600 metre long, 15 metre wide fish-shaped stone with
1200 year-old hydrological records carved into it]" in
Fuling. "There is definitely nothing special to seeing it, or
not seeing it," he says. "How important is the Zhangfei
Temple [a popular temple in honour of Zhangfei, a well-
known hero from the Three Kingdoms period of 220-280
BC]?" he continues. "I feel it is a matter of little
consequence."
Professor Zhang discounted the views of 53 scientists,
engineers and water management experts who, in April
2000, called on the Chinese leadership to raise the water
levels in the reservoir slowly, rather than quickly as dam
officials are planning to do. The 53 experts want to allow
time for resettlement, time to evaluate the impact of silt
deposits on navigation and ports at the reservoir's
uppermost end, and time to determine if higher water levels
are viable. Zhang viewed them as ill-informed critics who
wanted merely to "create a disturbance." As for allegations
that the Three Gorges dam and its related infrastructure are
being built with "tofu" -- a reference to a structurally
unsound bridge that collapsed at the Three Gorges site --
Professor Zhang says it isn't that bad, but it is far from
"excellent." The problem he explains, is "that we are
constantly trying to quicken the pace of the project and go
too fast."
Guo sent these comments on to China's Vice-Premier, Wu
Bangguo who immediately wrote his comments and sent the
transcript "for Comrade Rongji's reading." The next day,
Premier Zhu Rongji circulated the document and asked that
it be reported to former Premier and Three Gorges' chief
architect Li Peng, and to its general manager, Lu Youmei.
Chongqing officials, meanwhile, kept up pressure on these
officials to address this pressing environmental problem.
According to a September 18, 2000 report in Zhong Xin
She (China News Service) Chongqing Deputy Mayor Chen
Jiwa, together with officials from the city's Environmental
Protection Bureau, visited the Three Gorges dam project
and issued serious criticism of the poor environmental
protection work being carried out there. China's
environmental protection authorities had required that
protection efforts be carried out simultaneously with the
dam project's design, construction, and operations. But
one-half of the relocated enterprises in the dam area had
failed to implement these requirements. For example, the
pollution-treatment system of a monosodium glutamate
factory belonging to the Feiya Group is still being designed -
- even though the factory has been operating since 1997.
The plant currently discharges dense, polluted wastewater
directly into the Yangtze River. In addition, none of the
hospitals in 13 counties meet pollution standards. Instead
they discharge their wastewater directly into the Wujiang,
which then flows into the Yangtze River.
While it is difficult to know if Professor Zhang's agitation
has had an effect, the impending environmental calamity at
Three Gorges seems to have received increased political and
press attention recently. According to a January 3, 2001
Xinhua story, the People's Government of Chongqing
formally resolved to protect the environment around the
reservoir with US$5.37 billion to be spent over the next 10
years -- still a fraction of the US$37 billion budget called for
by Professor Zhang. Meanwhile, while Professor Zhang has
sounded the alarm internally, other government agencies are
beginning to complain publicly that environmental
protection at the Three Gorges dam site is grossly
inadequate. According to a February 1, 2001 story in the
South China Morning Post, the powerful State
Development Planning Commission has told Beijing that the
US$500 million allocated to environmental protection will
not prevent the Three Gorges reservoir from becoming a
huge sewage lake. Qi Lin, the director of the Three Gorges
Resettlement Bureau has also complained that the US$37.5
million budget for environmental protection in resettlement
towns is far too low.
[Link to correspondence and transcript of the meeting
between Professor Zhang and Director Guo]
- END -
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Three Gorges Probe welcomes submissions. However, it is not
a forum for political debate. Rather, Three Gorges Probe is
dedicated to covering the scientific, technical, economic, social,
and environmental ramifications of completing the Three Gorges
Project, as well as the alternatives to the dam.
Publisher: Patricia Adams
Executive Editor: Mu Lan
Assistant Editor: Lisa Peryman
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