In a frank interview
last week with Beijing Television, Prof. Zhang, now in his early 90s,
said: “As for the quality of the Three Gorges dam, I have to say that
it’s far from excellent. Overall, it’s okay, but not first-class.”

When pressed to elaborate, Prof. Zhang said: “We didn’t do a good
job on the construction, though generally speaking it’s not too bad.
So, overall, we gave it a ‘generally satisfactory’ mark when we did our
assessment of it [before the filling of the reservoir last year]. In
other words, it’s not so good.”

He said that while he did not foresee significant trouble ahead (“I
don’t think it will collapse or run into major problems”), the Three
Gorges dam had earned only a lacklustre pass mark because China’s
technology, management and quality control are “not as good as in
foreign countries.”

Prof. Zhang, who has been involved in the design of many of China’s
major dams, began working on the Three Gorges project half a century
ago. “I was responsible for working out solutions to some key technical
problems with the construction of the Three Gorges dam,” he told
interviewer Zeng Tao.

He said that despite the achievements of China’s dam-building program,
his biggest regret was that ordinary people “have benefited little” and
that “many still live in poverty and misery.”

During the interview, broadcast on Jan. 29, Prof. Zhang also spoke
publicly for the first time about fellow water engineer Huang Wanli,
his colleague at Beijing’s prestigious Qinghua University who died in
2001 at age 90.

“I have a great deal of respect for him, because he dared to tell
the truth, which is a lofty achievement,” Prof. Zhang said. Both men
had been involved in the disastrous Sanmenxia dam on the Yellow River,
completed in 1960. Prof. Huang, who had vigorously opposed the project,
warned against sealing outlets at the base of the dam that were
designed to allow sediment to flow out of the reservoir. Prof. Huang’s
advice was ignored, he was labelled a “rightist” and sentenced to years
of hard labour.

The Sanmenxia reservoir silted up quickly after the outlets were
sealed and, far from being useful for flood control, the dam became a
serious hazard. Prof. Zhang recently told China Central Television that Sanmenxia was “a mistake” that should be shut down before it causes yet more flooding.

Prof. Zhang, who helped to close off the silt-discharging outlets at
Sanmenxia, told Beijing Television that he had been unwilling to do so,
but was just following orders.

He then spoke of his enormous regard for his courageous colleague,
who had spoken out and suffered greatly as a result: “One thing is
certain about Huang: He never ever lied. He just spoke his mind. …
One of his principles was to speak the truth openly; he wasn’t just out
to make trouble.”

Prof. Zhang added: “It’s not so easy for all of us to speak out the way he did, is it?”

 

See also: A tale of two scientists