Inter Press Service
August 30, 2006

Authorities have vehemently denied that continuous drought and shortage of drinking water in southwest China are somehow related to the completion this year of the Three Gorges dam.

Beijing: China’s worst drought in fifty years has forced Chinese leaders to defend their record of building vast hydro-engineering works at a time when the country’s finite water resources are increasingly depleted by population growth and rapid economic development. Authorities have vehemently denied that continuous drought and shortage of drinking water in southwest China, which has affected the lives of 17 million people, are somehow related to the completion this year of the Three Gorges Dam — the world’s largest dam straddling the Yangtze River. … But the month-long droughts in the Yangtze basin this summer have spurred speculations that the massive dam has upset the natural balance and is causing the decrease in rainfall. Opponents of the project have long asserted that the dam will have untold ecological effects, changing the climate of the entire region.