A wastewater-treatment project that must be up and running before the Three Gorges reservoir is filled next year is behind schedule because of citizens’ demands for higher compensation, the Chongqing Morning Post (Chongqing chenbao) reports.

About 55,000 square metres of housing in Chongqing municipality are to be demolished and 100 hectares of rural land expropriated for the scheme, which is being funded by US$360 million in loans from the World Bank.

With some individuals and companies holding out for more money for their homes or land, only 30 per cent of the necessary clearance work has been completed, the newspaper reported.

One of the affected firms, the Changjiang Shipping Co., for example, is insisting on compensation of US$500 a square metre, well above the US$375 project authorities are offering. As a result, work has been halted “for a long time” on the Taipingmen wastewater-treatment plant, one of the largest components of the project, the newspaper reported.

No compensation is being offered for the temporary use of land while underground pipes are laid, and other delays are occurring as residents and companies appeal for financial compensation in such cases.

Chongqing is racing to clean up the heavily polluted Yangtze before the Three Gorges dam permanently slows the river’s flow, concentrating pollutants in a 600-kilometre-long reservoir. (See The reservoir-cleanup concerns pile up and Chongqing launches campaign to prevent a Three Gorges cesspool.) China’s State Council has said the wastewater-treatment scheme must be finished before the reservoir is filled in June 2003.

Every year Chongqing discharges more than one billion tonnes of industrial wastewater and 300 million tonnes of sewage into the site of the future reservoir, but only 28 per cent and 8 per cent of that, respectively, is treated.