3GorgesDam:Fog brings traffic jams

[GWR]

http://www.upiasiaonline.com/Economics/2007/12/05/commentary_the_tragedy_of_the_three_gorges_dam/3564/

Commentary: The tragedy of the Three Gorges Dam
AUCKLAND, New Zealand, Dec. 5
CHEN WEIJIAN
Guest Commentary
Since the Three Gorges Dam went into operation in China, it has caused serious erosion, landslides and earth tremors that have caused cracks in the homes of local farmers. These pose a grave danger not only to transport through the waterway but also to the livelihoods and even the lives of local residents.

Authorities are trying to cover up the real situation while quietly preparing an early warning system for landslides and other accidents. They do not admit that a serious mistake has been made and it is too late to correct it.

In Hubei province, where the main dam site is located, a recent landslide near a tunnel in Badong county killed two people and injured one, with another two reported missing. Three days later, a seriously damaged bus was discovered under rubble on the road, with 28 dead inside, according to Chinese media. It is believed that the bus, which had departed from Shanghai, just happened to pass that spot at the time of the landslide and was buried under giant boulders.

Why was the bus discovered only three days after the accident? Someone had seen the tail end of the bus, which was mostly buried in the landslide, said the media. The witness was named and gave a convincing description of the bus. However, the authorities said at the time that they had received no such report. Obviously the authorities wanted to cover up this serious accident, for it was not simply a car accident, but had a direct connection with the mistakes of the Three Gorges Dam project.

This was not the first landslide in Badong county. In June, a huge avalanche swept down a hillside and carried away 15 buildings in Qingtaiping township. The landslide dislodged some 5 million cubic meters of soil and dumped it in the Qing River, sending 30-meter waves crashing toward the opposite shore. Two-thirds of the waterway was blocked and 12 people were missing. Such successive landslides have kept the Chinese Communist Party leadership on the hot seat.

Such disasters, predicted long ago by opponents of the Three Gorges project, are now becoming reality. The Party leaders, with their proclivity for boasting and showing off their great projects, ignored all warnings and went ahead with the dam; now they can do nothing but regret their hasty decisions. Thus the leadership is trying to cover up such accidents.

However, such a terrible thing as the loss of 28 people's lives cannot be kept secret. When the family members of those bus passengers began to seek their loved ones, the truth could no longer be kept hidden. Three days later, the media confirmed their deaths.

According to well-known environmentalist and writer Dai Qing, the Three Gorges Dam project is one of the Chinese leaders' biggest regrets. It not only spent a huge amount of capital, but also cast a long shadow that cannot be removed. The dam is like a giant powder keg that could explode at any time.

Successive accidents have occurred since the dam went into operation, many caused by design faults, such as the cracks that have developed in the main structure. The project has brought changes in the local ecology and climate, landslides, disturbances to water transport, silt accumulation and serious water pollution. It has forced the relocation of several waves of local residents.

Statistics show that there have been more than 1,500 landslides and more than 2,300 earth tremors from 2003 to 2006. With the rising water level, more water pressure will lead to more seeping from the mountains, and the result will be much worse.

The Chinese government has spent 12 billion yuan (US$1.6 billion) on fortifying the earth against landslides. Nevertheless, after the earth has been shifted, it can be said that every corner in this huge neighborhood of the Three Gorges Dam is a location for a possible landslide. The lives of those dwelling in Badong are in great danger, and this cannot be solved easily by throwing money at the problem.

The most famous water conservancy expert in China, the late Huang Wanli, who was a professor at Qinghua University in Beijing, once asked the central government to allow him 30 minutes to illustrate why the Three Gorges Dam was not a workable project. But the government sacrificed its principles to its interest, and the 30 minutes were never granted. The professor took his worries to his grave.

Although the project's mistakes are fundamental, intrinsic and irreparable, the CCP leadership is still defending its position. A few days ago the State Council official in charge of the Three Gorges project, Kuang Xiao, surprisingly stated that no major geological damage had been done and no fatal accidents caused as a result of the dam. He said this in spite of the recent deaths in Badong.

Whenever overseas media have voiced concerns over the dam, the CCP has described this as distortion and bedeviling of the project. The elderly academician Pan Jiazheng, who has an engineering background, defended the project with an emotional appeal, not a scientific one. "The Three Gorges Dam project has required all my energy in the second half of my life, and I feel horrible hearing people describe it as a devil, a time bomb and even a huge ton of soy sauce," he said.

This kind of self-deceiving and sensational expression in fact reveals the CCP's anxiety over the project, as well as its attempt to avoid taking responsibility for its problems.

Chen Weijian is editor-in-chief of the Chinese newspaper "Xin Bao" in New Zealand, and a well-known critic of current affairs. He emigrated from China to New Zealand in 1991.


Reports of the 'bus' landslide:

Death toll in central China landslide hits 33: report

Monday, December 3, 2007
AFP

BEIJING -- The death toll has risen to 33 in a landslide in central China that buried a passenger bus and a team of construction workers, and could riser higher still, state media reported Sunday. Rescuers found another body on Sunday at the scene of the disaster in Badong county, bringing the grim count to 33, along with scattered body parts that could indicate other victims, Xinhua news agency said.

Most of the bodies have been found in a bus that was passing through a mountainous area near a railway tunnel when the landslide occurred on November 20, state media have said previously, citing rescue workers.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/china/2007/12/03/133322/Death%2Dtoll.htm

Bus crushed in China dam area landslide

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/news_images/20071124/p7a.jpg
[Photo: The China Post - The scene of a landslide near Badong, central China’s Hubei province Thursday. Workers clearing rocks from the landslide that happened Tuesday discovered a bus underneath the rubble Friday morning, and there was little hope that the 27 people onboard were still alive after three days, authorities said. (AP)]

Saturday, November 24, 2007
By Chris Buckley, Reuters

BEIJING -- The death toll from a landslide near China's massive Three Gorges Dam soared on Friday when state media revealed the collapse had crushed a bus, killing 31 people.

The bus was found three days after Tuesday's landslide. Early reports from the Xinhua news agency had put casualties at the railway tunnel construction site at one worker killed, one injured and two missing.

The deaths come amid growing local fears and mixed official statements about land hazards around the rising dam.

The latest report from the scene in Badong county, Hubei province, said a road near the rail site had also been buried under rocks and earth.

By Friday afternoon, a local government Web site said, rescuers had removed the first body from the crushed bus, a long-distance coach from Shanghai which had been crowded with returning migrant workers.

The number of people aboard when the landslide hit was confirmed as 31, Xinhua quoted local officials as saying.

Thirteen of the victims were from five families, including a four-month-old boy, his 20-year-old mother and another two one-year-old boys, according to a partial list of the passengers posted on the Badong government Web site (www.cjbd.com.cn).

Authorities held out no hope of finding anyone alive. "It's been too long, and the bus was totally crushed," Zeng Bing, a Badong government official, told Reuters by telephone.

A manager from the Lichuan Lida Bus Company told Reuters that officials had been alerted to the missing bus only after relatives and the company contacted them with their worries.

The landslide struck near a tributary of the 660-km (410-mile) Three Gorges Dam reservoir, sending down 1,000 cubic meters of rocks and mud and scaffolding, the Web site said.

The disaster appeared to be the latest warning of geological threats around the dam. Reports have not speculated on whether the slide could be linked to the dam's rising waters, which are due to peak at 175 meters (574 feet) above sea level next year.

Badong is one of the steep areas along the reservoir where local residents recently told Reuters they had seen more landslides and tremors since the water level rose last year, increasing pressure on brittle slopes.

In September, dam officials warned of potential "environmental catastrophe" unless erosion and geological instability around the reservoir were controlled. It was an abrupt departure from the generally upbeat propaganda about the world's biggest dam project.

Since then they have repeatedly said those threats are being dealt with and the dam's environment is better than expected.


http://www.chinapost.com.tw/china/2007/11/24/132176/Bus%2Dcrushed.htm

[GWR]

Three Gorges Dam unleashes water to ensure shipping

YICHANG, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- The Three Gorges Dam has increased water discharge in a bid to maintain normal shipping along China's longest river, the Yangtze, which is currently suffering its worst drought in 50 years.

The discharge speed reached 5,500 cubic meters per second on Thursday, 300 cubic meters more than Tuesday, when the dam, the world's largest hydropower project, started the move to alleviate the effects of drought, according to the China Three Gorges Project Corporation (CTGPC), the dam builder.

Less rainfall inflow along the upper reaches of the river has lowered water level by up to 2 meters in the middle reaches, and the average water level has decreased by 1.5 meters more than normal.

At least 26 cargo ships have been stranded in the section that encompasses Yichang, Wuhan, Jingzhou of Hubei Province and Jiujiang, Hukou of the neighboring Jiangxi Province, over the past month, according to the Yangtze River Maritime Administration (YRMA).

By Thursday afternoon, water level in the Yichang section, almost the start of the middle reaches, has regained 0.5 meters.

The discharge is scheduled to last until Tuesday and the CTGPC will decide whether to continue or suspend the move according to the state of the river.

YRMA issued an emergency warning on Wednesday, reminding cargo ships to avoid being stranded in the middle reaches.

According to an order issued by Yichang Maritime Bureau, every cargo ship must undergo weight checks at eight harbors in Yichang City and unload excess goods before continuing.

An average of 170 cargo ships will navigate along the route every day.

More than 1,000 workers, 100 boats and 18 dredgers are digging out silt in the river maintaining the route to ensure safety for passing ships.

The Yangtze, which stretches 6,300 km, suffers a dry season between November and April. This is often followed by a spring flood.

The Three Gorges Dam, built between the upper and middle reaches of the river, will unleash water reserves to alleviate the drought or hold up floods before they inundate downstream regions. (XINHUA)

http://enews.mcot.net/view.php?id=1673

[GWR]

Three Gorges Dam stirs concerns
Monday, December 31, 2007
By Audra Ang, AP

HUANGTUPO VILLAGE, China -- Wang Zhushu rarely sleeps at night. Instead, the 61-year-old retiree paces, listening to the drone of passing ships that shake the walls of her house on the banks of the Yangtze River.

Wang's one-story, brick-and-concrete home rests, she says, on increasingly unsteady earth, weakened and waterlogged as rising waters turn the Yangtze into an ever-broadening reservoir behind China's mammoth Three Gorges Dam.

"The house has become crooked. Water seeps through the floor and there are cracks growing here, here and here," said Wang, pointing to the ceiling, a storeroom and a rock wall with crevices. At night, "I can feel the vibrations. I walk round and round the room, and I worry."

For millions of Chinese living along the reservoir's shores, the dam that the government said would give them a new life is stirring fresh concern.

Four years after the waters began rising in the 410 mile-long reservoir, villagers tell of warped foundations and fissures snaking along the earth. Pollution in the once fast-running river is building in the turbid reservoir. Landslides, common in the rainy region, are occurring more frequently. The ships are nothing new, but now they are one more reason for Wang to worry.

She isn't alone. In Meiping, a hamlet with mountainsides of fragrant orange groves, villagers are hurriedly building new homes after the government declared their old ones unsafe this past summer following landslides.

"We live in constant fear," said Mei Changxin, 45, an orange grower who covers the cracked walls of his crumbling two-story home with newspapers. "When I work in the fields sometimes fear grips me just thinking that my house may suddenly collapse."

The US$22 billion dam, the world's biggest hydroelectric project, was supposed to end flooding along the Yangtze and provide a clean energy alternative to coal. Approved in 1992 and due to be completed in 2009, it will generate 84.7 billion kilowatts of electricity each year -- the equivalent of what it takes to light the counties of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento, according to figures from 2005. Yet along the way more than 1.4 million people had to be moved. Though critics and experts warned the environment and people would pay too high a price, their criticisms were ignored and suppressed by a government in thrall to large engineering projects.

Even a few officials are breaking ranks to predict catastrophe. Toxic algae is blooming, feeding off industrial waste and sewage and tainting water supplies.

Experts have warned that the waters in the enormous reservoir are undermining hillsides. Water seeps into loosely packed soil and rocks, making them heavier and wetter, and can trigger landslides on steep slopes like those rising from the Yangtze.

Additionally, the huge weight of the water on the rock bed exerts a pressure that can lead to earthquakes.

Such tremors shook the area around the Hoover Dam after Lake Mead was filled up the 1930s, according to the book "Earthquakes in Human History." A magnitude-6.4 quake near India's Koyna Dam killed at least 180 people in 1967 and is thought to have been induced by the reservoir.

Chinese officials have denied it can happen here, but Dai Qing is unconvinced.

"Almost all my fears have come true," said the Chinese journalist, a persistent opponent of the project whose writings are mostly banned in China. "The landslides and cracks have made people migrants once again. The water in the rivers and reservoirs is no longer drinkable. No matter how much power the project generates, it cannot make up for the losses."

How the communist government deals with these problems has become a test for the Communist Party leadership headed by President Hu Jintao, who has promised to deliver more compassionate, responsive and environmentally sensitive government.

Hu conspicuously stayed away from a ceremony last year to celebrate completion of the dam, unlike previous leaders who often associated themselves with the engineering marvel.

In September, state-controlled media ran rare admissions by officials about the problems.

Wang Xiaofeng, deputy director of the Three Gorges Project Construction Committee, was quoted as saying China risked disaster. Vice Mayor Tan Qiwei of Chongqing, a sprawling metropolis next to the reservoir, told of 91 reported landslides along 22 miles of shoreline.

"The ecological situation in Three Gorges areas is worse than I expected," said Chen Guojie, a professor with the Institute of Mountain Hazards and the Environment at the government-backed Chinese Academy of Sciences. He ticked off a list of worries -- tremors, erosion and pollution -- and said the social impact was equally grave.

"Farmers lost their land and moved to new towns, but these towns had no industry and there were not enough jobs," he said. "So many of the young farmers were forced to leave their homes and work in other cities."

As criticism has mounted in recent weeks along with the problems -- a landslide in the region killed at least 34 people last month -- the government has launched a renewed public relations campaign stressing the project's benefits.

"We have resolved all the problems in the past decade and everything is under control," Sun Zhiyu, director of the Three Gorges project's Environment Protection Bureau, told foreign reporters last month on a government-organized tour of the area.

Beijing also says it will shore up the area's environment with new measures to control pollution, close industrial and mining enterprises and monitor geological hazards. Meanwhile, local governments are relocating the tens of thousands of people living in dangerous areas.

In the heart of Badong county, where Wang Zhushu lives, the county resettlement office says some 25,000 people will soon be moved again -- the third time for some of them. Wang and her 67-year-old husband haven't had to move yet, but that may come if the waters rise high enough to engulf their home.

The first human displacement was for a smaller dam project in the 1980s. Then, a decade later, the threat of landslides forced residents to move about three miles.

"We are now planning to move most of the government departments and population to nearby areas because they are situated where geological disasters are likely to occur," said an official with the resettlement office who would only give his surname, Lu.

Badong has long been a thriving commercial center, producing goods such as lacquer and oils and shipping them on the Yangtze.

Effects of the rising waters have become apparent in recent years, residents say. Roads are split and buckled and need regular repair. Dilapidated buildings sit abandoned, while red-and-white signs warning of landslides are everywhere.

Along Wang Zhushu's street, her neighbors share the same complaints.

Wang Zhonghe, whose garden is less than 10 feet from the river, said she had been jolted awake twice by small earthquakes this year. Her husband had to shave two inches off the bottom of their front door so that it would close.

Xiang Zhen, who lives on the second floor of an eight-story riverside complex, said one landslide damaged her building and cracks have been developing since 2003.

"We're afraid of heavy rains because that will affect the land," said Xiang, 38, a laid-off worker who now lives off the vegetables she grows.

Further downstream, residents of Yemaomian are building spacious, multistory houses less than a mile from the terraced slopes where they lived for a decade after being moved to make way for the dam.

But they don't feel much safer. In recent months, tremors have shaken the area and gaps have opened in the earth. The local government deemed the area "landslide-prone," and in the summer, many villagers slept in a road tunnel for fear that the rains would unleash a landslide and bury them in their beds.

Most took the US$930 per head in compensation the government offered them to leave their homes and carve out a new life in an area accessible only via one potholed road.

"It's hard to start over. Whenever I move, it affects my livelihood," said Chen Zijiang, 26, an orange farmer who was helping his younger sister and parents carry their belongings to their new home.

Each time the family has had to abandon its orange trees and house, losing tens of thousands of dollars in crops and housing costs, he said. He has had to become a part-time driver to boost his monthly income from about US$50 to US$130. To add food to the table, he plans to grow beans on ground that split open in April, leaving a gash six feet long and two inches wide.

"Although moving makes us poor, we have to do it," Chen said. "Am I happy? Do I have a choice?"
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/china/2007/12/31/137075/p1/Three%2DGorges.htm

[GWR]

"15 square-meter dam area". :confused:

Three Gorges Dam "could get 1.18 million visitors this year"

YICHANG, March 12 (Xinhua) -- The Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest, could attract at least 1.18 million tourists this year when the entire hydropower project is basically completed, tourism developers said on Wednesday.

As China's largest industrial tourist site, the dam had seen its annual visitors exceed 1 million for three consecutive years, with 2007 seeing a record high of 1.25 million.

"The 15 square-meter dam area will have a tourist boom this year thanks to the Olympic Games in August and the basic completion of the Three Gorges Project by the end of the year," said Chen Mengjiong, manager of the Three Gorges Tourism Development Co. Ltd. (TGTDC)

Builders completed construction of the 2,309-meter-long, 185-meter-high dam in 2006. Power transmission facilities were completed in 2007.

The relocation of 1.2 million people in the region would be finished before the summer flood season started on the Yangtze River, making it possible to raise the water level in the reservoir to 172-175 meters. (Xinhua)

Today In Asia : Last Update : 18:56:53 12 March 2008 (GMT+7:00)
http://enews.mcot.net/view.php?id=3242

[GWR]

Fog strands 200 vessels at China's Three Gorges dam

YICHANG, March 17 (Xinhua) -- More than 200 vessels were still stranded at China's Three Gorges Dam area on Monday by thick fog that rolled in late on Saturday, waterway authorities said on Monday.

Visibility was only 200 meters at 10 a.m. on Monday and ship lock navigation was still suspended, said the Yangtze River Three Gorges Navigation Bureau.

Navigation has been halted for more than 35 hours since Saturday night.

Twelve cargo vessels were still stranded in the ship lock.

Weather forecasters say the fog may disperse later on Monday.

The Three Gorges -- the Qutang, Wuxia and Xiling gorges -- extends about 200 kilometers on the upper and middle reaches of the 6,300 kilometer Yangtze, China's longest river.

China launched the Three Gorges hydropower project and water control facility in 1993 with a budget of 22.5 billion U.S. dollars.

A 185-meter-high dam for the project was completed in 2006. The five-tier ship lock was commissioned in 2003.

Workers have so far completed installation of 21 generators. The project's 26 turbo-generators are designed to produce 84.7 billion kwh of electricity a year after its scheduled completion this year. (Xinhua)


Today In Asia : Last Update : 12:04:45 17 March 2008 (GMT+7:00)
http://enews.mcot.net/view.php?id=3310