---

The deaths of five construction workers in an earth slide at the site of China’s US$25 billion Three Gorges Dam has heightened fears that the gigantic engineering project could trigger geological disasters across the region.

Witnesses said six workers were pouring concrete at the construction site on Tuesday when a large mound of earth collapsed onto them. One man, Liu Yong, was pulled out alive.

According to the most recent figures, some 40 workers died during 1999-2000 in construction-related accidents at the site of the dam, which will be the largest in the world on completion in 2009.

News of the accident comes as experts warn that the newly built town of Wushan, which houses some of the 1.2 million people who will be displaced by the dam, is also under threat from a steadily moving landslide. An estimated 20 million cubic meters of rock and earth are threatening the center of the town, 125 kilometers from the dam.

Dozens of new buildings, including a school attended by 2,000 children, lie in the landslide zone, according to the Chongqing Morning Post. A new courthouse, police station, epidemic-prevention center, and port authority building are also threatened.

The Post said emergency teams were monitoring earth movements and taking urgent measures to prevent a slide. Two more teams of experts will be sent to the area next week to carry out further checks, the newspaper reported.

Xu Kaixiang, chief engineer of the Three Gorges geological disasters prevention headquarters, said that construction work in the area had reactivated geological weaknesses that had caused landslips in the past.

More than 1,300 zones in the region face similar geological dangers, including landslides and mud-rock flows, according to the Yangtze River Water Resources Committee. Landslides in the region have killed about 400 people in the last two decades, occurring even before dam construction began.

Two senior water engineers recently urged the Chinese government to undertake a geological safety inspection of all new settlements being built in the area before the dam reservoir, which will submerge 129 towns and cities and 24,500 hectares of farmland, is filled next year.

Opponents of the dam have long warned that major land movements could be triggered by the filling of the 660 kilometer-long reservoir and by construction work on new settlements and roads. Last year the Chinese government allocated some $361 million to prevent geological disasters in the region.

The government says the dam will tame the river Yangtze’s floods, which killed over 300,000 people during the 20th century.

Electricity generated by the dam will be equivalent to the power of 18 nuclear plants.