This article is based on a story published in Oriental Outlook Weekly (Liaowang dongfang zhoukan) on Oct. 20, 2004. Improving navigation on the Yangtze River was cited as a chief justification for going ahead with the Three Gorges dam, but so far the project’s shiplock has proved to be a bottleneck. Delays have become routine, Oriental Outlook Weekly (Liaowang dongfang zhoukan) reports.

¬†Luckily the holdups at the dam are not normally as severe as one that occurred last spring. At one point during the 23-day closure of the shiplock’s upstream chambers for inspection, 900 vessels became caught in a giant floating traffic jam that lasted five days, as boatloads of fresh produce and meat slowly rotted.

Though both sections of the shiplock are now back in operation, an average of 30 boats a day are still not able to make it through the dam. Shipping companies are being forced to move some freight overland around the dam. And so, in addition to a string of boats waiting on the river to enter the shiplock, a long line of trucks coming from roll-on, roll-off vessels can be seen clogging the road for several kilometres near the dam.

The Three Gorges shiplock went into trial operation on June 18, 2003. By the end of May of this year, an average of 222 boats were passing through the shiplock every day – only 57 per cent of designed capacity. Two complete open-and-close cycles of the shiplock are taking one hour and 56 minutes, almost twice as long as projected (59.7 minutes, according to the original plans).

 The Three Gorges Navigation Bureau submitted an urgent report to Chinese leaders in March of this year, in which it blamed most of the problems at the shiplock on design flaws. It said that whether or not boats were "standardized" played a far less important role in the navigation delays than the dam authority claimed.

The water level in the reservoir is now normally kept at 139 metres above sea level. Boats pass through four chambers as the shiplock raises them to the higher water level above the dam, or takes them to the lower river level downstream. When the reservoir is raised to a planned 156 metres in 2006, all five chambers of the shiplock will be pressed into service. Experts who have been involved in inspections of the structure worry that delays at the dam will get even worse when the shiplock becomes a five-stage operation.

 One remedial step that has been proposed is to transfer some freight Рand possibly some passengers, too Рoverland around the dam as a long-term strategy. Roll-on, roll-off ports that were built to facilitate the movement of freight around the dam during the project construction phase may therefore be busy on a permanent basis.

Navigation officials who believe the one-step shiplift will help to ease traffic congestion at the dam want it built as soon as possible. Construction of the shiplift, which will be the largest in the world both in terms of height and hoisting capacity, is scheduled to start next year and to be completed in 2009.

Translation by Three Gorges Probe (Chinese) editor Mu Lan.