Associated Press
October 2, 2006

The total number of people who will be displaced by China’s massive Three Gorges dam has been raised by 270,000, to 1.4 million people, state media said. The official Xinhua News Agency on Sunday quoted Pu Haiqing, head of the Cabinet-level Three Gorges Project Construction Committee, as saying that total would be reached before the project is completed in 2008. The number of people already relocated has reached 1.2 million people, surpassing the original estimate of 1.13 million, Pu said. … According to the report, Pu said the higher number of dislocated people resulted from consideration for the local ecology. It did not give additional details. The $22 billion dam on the Yangtze River was completed this spring. Its power generation facilities are slated to be finished by 2008.