The Irrawaddy
August 9, 2006

‘At both Maji and Songta there is much activity. Generators rumble, power tools blast into the riverbanks. Trucks full of workers and engineers are everywhere. According to some reports there have been no environmental impact surveys.’

Rudy Thomas recently traveled more than 300 miles up the Salween river through Yunnan, visiting most of the proposed dam sites and talking to local people and engineering workers. This is his account.

I started near the border with Burma’s Kokang area and traveled into southeastern Tibet, visiting 12 of the 13 potential dam sites.

The course of the Nu (the Chinese name for the Salween) is a mix of mountain walls, tributaries, forests and much rare wildlife. The people and lifestyles are about as diverse as you can find in China, or anywhere on earth. The only thing the people seem to have in common is a lack of knowledge about the dams. …

There have been no official announcements about the dams, no meetings organized by local party leaders, no promises of compensation. …

At both Maji and Songta there is much activity. Generators rumble, power tools blast into the riverbanks. Trucks full of workers and engineers are everywhere. According to some reports there have been no environmental impact surveys, and the local Tibetans – who put up stiff resistance during the Red Army invasion of 1949 – do not believe that the dams will do them any good.