Landslides, pollution, migration: China’s massive Three Gorges dam stirs concerns anew

For millions of Chinese living along the Three Gorges reservoir’s shores, the dam that the government said would give them a new life is stirring fresh concern, Audra Ang reports. Four years after the waters began rising in the 410 mile-long reservoir, villagers tell of warped foundations and fissures snaking along the earth. Landslides, common in the rainy region, are occurring more frequently. Villagers whose houses have become unsafe since the Three Gorges reservoir began filling in 2003 are interviewed. Wang Zhushu’s one-story, brick-and-concrete home in Badong county, rests on increasingly unsteady earth, weakened and waterlogged as rising waters turn the Yangtze into an ever-broadening reservoir behind China’s mammoth Three Gorges dam.

Officials deny that a major earthquake could happen at Three Gorges but critics are not convinced: “Almost all my fears have come true,” Dai Qing told ABC News. “The landslides and cracks have made people migrants once again. The water in the rivers and reservoirs is no longer drinkable. No matter how much power the project generates, it cannot make up for the losses.”