Reuters
May 21, 2007
HONG KONG – China’s Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydropower project, is retaining huge amounts of sediment and nutrients and causing significant erosion in the downstream reaches of the Yangtze River, researchers have found.
In a paper published in the latest volume of the Geophysical Research Letters, Chinese scientists said the dam had retained 151 million tons of sediment each year since 2003.
“The Three Gorges Dam, which has regulated the waters of the Yangtze River since 2003, retains two-thirds of the upstream sediment each year,” they wrote.
“In response to this retention, significant erosion occurs in the riverbed downstream of the dam…. Sediment flux to the Yangtze River mouth has decreased by 31 percent per year. The Yangtze delta is shrinking.
“Continued sediment retention at these rates, combined with more dams planned for the watershed, will severely affect people and the ecosystems on the Yangtze delta,” they added.
Categories: Sediment, Three Gorges Probe
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