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Work on a wastewater-treatment system that must be finished before the Three Gorges reservoir is filled next year has been halted because of angry protests by citizens demanding higher compensation, the Chongqing Morning Post (Chongqing chenbao) reports. In one dramatic confrontation, irate local residents set up a tent in the middle of a construction site to bring work to a stop.

Chongqing is racing to clean up the heavily polluted Yangtze River before the Three Gorges dam permanently slows the river’s flow, concentrating pollutants in a 660-kilometre reservoir. Every year Chongqing municipality (population 30 million) 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.

The Chongqing Water Sewage Treatment Project is regarded as a vital component of plans to safeguard water quality in the reservoir. The network of sewage pipelines and treatment plants is being built with US$360 million in loans from the World Bank, and the source of the funds appears to be part of the problem. Local people losing land, homes or businesses to the scheme are aware of the large amount of foreign money involved in the project, and are holding out for more generous compensation deals than they have been offered.

A reporter for the Chongqing Morning Post was shocked recently to find the construction site of one of the pipelines completely deserted. Tools were scattered around and a big sewer pipe, part of the so-called D Line, lay half-finished at the site near Nanbin Road in the Nanan district.

The reporter contacted Liu Guozhi, manager of the Chongqing Overseas Construction Corp., the contractors building the D Line. Mr. Liu complained that his men had been forced to stop work on the pipeline because of violent confrontations with residents, and that they would now have great difficulty completing their part of the project on schedule.

Mr. Liu said that on Sept. 4, a group of elderly men and women rushed onto the construction site and forced his workers to down tools. A few days later, others arrived intent on stopping construction and set up a large tent on the site. The site’s safety officer, He Jianchun, was badly beaten in a confrontation with several young men, Mr. Liu told the newspaper. A group of old people blocked the path of a cement truck while several young women smashed the vehicle’s windows, he said.

Work on another pipeline, the B Line, is at least half a year behind schedule because of a compensation dispute with a local company, the B Line’s supervising engineer told the newspaper. Wu Chengxiang was quoted as saying that the dispute with the Jiayihua Science and Technology Corp. was only one of many such wrangles bedevilling the project.

Work on the B Line, which runs between the Shapingba and Yuzhong districts, has been halted since April because of the fight being put up by the Jiayihua Corp., which is pressing for US$2.2 million to cover its losses. Chen Jun, the company’s vice general manager, said the project simply could not proceed until the compensation issue was resolved. The newspaper did not say how much money the firm has been offered.

Work on another key part of the project, the Jiguanshi tunnel linking the A, B, and D pipelines, has also encountered serious delays. Nearby residents have complained that the frequent blasts during the construction work have caused cracks in the walls of their houses. After project authorities turned down their requests for compensation, local people, mostly women, began visiting the project headquarters every day, "occupying the offices, scolding officials, and even lying down on the office desks," the newspaper said in its Sept. 19 report.

Wang Guangyu, the manager overseeing construction of the tunnel, said work on it had been delayed by at least three months. When his workers came under attack last December from residents who threw stones and even cut the electricity supply, the company had to call the police to restore order, Mr. Wang said.

For his part, Zhang Zhenghong, manager of the Chongqing Sewage Company, which has responsibility for the project as a whole, is a worried man. He told the Chongqing Morning Post that top leaders have repeatedly underscored the importance of the wastewater-treatment scheme, calling it a key national project and urging local officials to do everything in their power to carry it out well in order to protect the reservoir environment.

But, Mr. Zhang said, local residents and enterprises mistakenly believe that because a big-name donor is pouring big money into the project, they can demand "an unrealistic share." The project has been made so much more difficult because of this gap between local people’s expectations and the actual funds available for compensation, he said.

Mr. Zhang told the newspaper that his biggest worry is that three-quarters of the time allotted for the project has elapsed, but less than half the work has been completed. "With so little time left [before the reservoir is due to be filled], how can we report to the State Council?" he said.

The British vice-supervisor of the sewage project has urged Beijing to pay more attention to the scheme, the Chongqing Morning Post reported on Sept. 20. He was quoted as saying that the compensation issue, in particular, had to be addressed urgently to avoid further delays, as project authorities race against time to meet the tight schedule. The British expert is with the Mott MacDonald Group, a UK-based consulting company that has supervised construction work on some of the world’s largest infrastructure projects, including the Channel Tunnel and the Hong Kong International Airport.