Eight years after construction of the Three Gorges Dam began, China’s top planning agency is appealing to Beijing for extra funds to prevent the planned reservoir becoming a huge sewage lake. The State Development Planning Commission and other government departments say the approved amount of four billion yuan (HK$3.76 billion) will not cover all environmental protection projects at the construction sites, the reservoir area and in the resettlement towns, according to a report by the state-run China Environment News. The overall budget for the project has gone from 90 billion yuan in 1993 to 203.9 billion yuan today, leaving the environmental protection budget lagging behind. Qi Lin, director of the State Immigration Bureau, told the People’s Daily that the 300 million yuan budget for environmental protection in resettlement towns was far too low. He said a recent survey found the actual cost is between two billion and three billion yuan. Many officials and experts have long voiced concern about the inadequacy of the environmental protection budget, warning that the 30-billion-cubic-metre reservoir could turn into a sewage pond soon after its completion in 2009. According to earlier reports from state-run media, the municipality of Chongqing each year discharges more than one billion tonnes of industrial waste water and 300 million tonnes of sewage into the future reservoir area. Further upstream, Sichuan province discharged 1.7 billion tonnes of waste and sewage into the river system in the area. In addition, each year, about 21.7 million tonnes of garbage are dumped around the reservoir area, which is flushed into the Yangtze during the rainy season. Experts say that after the completion of the dam, the river’s slower flow and the ensuing water back-up will reduce its natural dilution effects. The People’s Daily quoted a report showing that pollution will increase by 34 per cent in the Chongqing section of the Yangtze after the dam is completed. State-run media reports said Chongqing treated 28 per cent of its industrial waste water and 8.27 per cent of its sewage water in 1999, lower than the national average. Although treatment facilities were said to be a priority in the 120 resettlement towns, many local governments cannot afford them. The People’s Daily reported that the budget for a 10,000-tonne plant in Wushan county was only 1.73 million yuan, 15 per cent of its actual cost.