Washington Post
May 8, 2000

‘Critics of the project – they are many, in China and abroad – have questioned whether building a giant dam is really scientific in the 21st century, when the United States and other nations are weighing the wisdom of damming their rivers.’

Three Gorges dam, China:  (Excerpt) After 13 years of breakneck construction that displaced more than a million villagers, China is about to pour the final concrete on an enormous dam across the mighty Yangtze River, seeking to tame the flood-prone waterway that has nurtured and tormented the Chinese people for 5,000 years. Engineers, many of whom have spent their entire careers on the site, will gather on Saturday for a ceremony to mark their achievement: The dun-colored barrier at last has reached its full height of 606 feet and stretches 7,575 feet across the Yangtze’s murky green waters in the Three Gorges area of central China’s Hubei province, 600 miles southwest of Beijing. … But critics of the project — they are many, in China and abroad — have questioned whether building a giant dam is really scientific in the 21st century, when the United States and other nations are weighing the wisdom of damming their rivers. Despite the $24 billion price tag, they note, the Three Gorges Dam will produce only 2 percent of China’s electricity by 2010. Moreover, environmentalists have warned that the backup of water behind the dam could end up as a giant waste-collection pool for Chongqing, China’s largest urban conglomeration about 250 miles upstream.