(October 15, 2001) A spill at a chemical plant in northwest China’s Shaanxi province has contaminated the Wuding River with 2,000 tons of alkaline waste.
Yellow River water sources drying up
(October 10, 2001) More than 2,000 lakes that nurture the source of China’s Yellow River are disappearing and causing water shortages, reports the state-run Xinhua news agency.
Witnesses to a crisis
A generation that helped build dams across China and clear its land for Mao Zedong’s revolution, has stopped to examine the environmental consequences of past actions. Highlighted in this report for the Far Eastern Economic Review, academics Lin Pei and Shen Zhaoli say a feat of social engineering unparalleled in human history and several hundred years is needed to reverse the damage done. But the report cautions, criticizing the government too harshly can lead to jail, as opponents of the country’s Three Gorges dam have discovered.
12 killed by floodwater after dam collapses in heavy rains
(October 5, 2001) Heavy rains caused a dam to collapse in southwest China, unleashing waters from a reservoir that killed 12 people and left 13 missing, according to Xinhua News Agency.
Eminent Chinese Hydrologist Dies at 90
(Fall/ Winter 2001) Huang Wanli was involved with many of the major water resources engineering projects in China during the last half of the twentieth century.
Yellow River water sources drying up
Three Gorges reservoir to get billion-dollar cleanup
(September 25, 2001) An inside source reports the Chinese government is planning to channel a budget of US$2.5 billion to help treat water pollution in the Three Gorges reservoir over a 10-year period. Since the reservoir is expected to be filled by 2003, nearby work sites slated for flooding, such as factories, mines and hospitals – at risk from poisons kept on the premises – will be cleaned up first.
Senior official questions market demand for big dams
(September 25, 2001) Zheng Jianchao, a member of China’s Academy of Engineering and the director of a water conservancy and hydropower electricity academy for the Ministry of Water Resources, called for consideration of market demand for two proposed big dams upstream of the Three Gorges project, reports Sanxia gongcheng bao (Three Gorges Project Daily).
Xiaolangdi hydro customers in short supply
(September 25, 2001) Zhongguo shuili bao (China Water Resources News) published by the Ministry of Water Resources in Beijing, reports that the Xiaolangdi dam on the Yellow River has cut back power production to just five hours per day due to a lack of electricity demand in coal-rich Henan Province.
Three Gorges migrants clash with police
(September 14, 2001) Radio Free Asia reported that up to one thousand migrants from the Three Gorges area, slated for resettlement in Hunan Province’s Yongzhou City, were gathering to block the city’s railway station and highway bridge in an attempt to secure a return passage to their place of origin.
Chinese officials to survey human rights condition of Three Gorges migrants
(September 11, 2001) A new survey will assess Three Gorges dam migrants’ human rights situation, reports Zhongguo xinwen she (China News Service). Described as an "empirical survey," to be conducted jointly by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Resettlement Bureau of the Three Gorges Project Construction Committee, the study will examine whether migrants’ human rights conditions have improved or deteriorated, what migrants’ rights and responsibilities are, and how forced resettlement has affected migrants’ employment, cultural, educational and political rights.
In deep
(August 18, 2001) Following up on Mao’s big idea
Resettlement operation in need of attention, says resettlement official
(August 17, 2001) During a recent inspection tour of Fuling City, Gan Yuping, Vice-Mayor of Chongqing Municipality and the head of the municipality’s resettlement affairs, said the resettlement operation required more attention in certain key areas, reports Three Gorges Project Daily – a China Three Gorges Corporation publication.
Probe International reports spur Chinese media to question authorities
(July 19, 2001) Hong Kong journal ZhengMing used Probe International news coverage in its June issue to openly question charges against three farmers arrested in Beijing earlier this year after trying to expose corruption over the Three Gorges dam to Chinese authorities.
Chongqing launches campaign to prevent a Three Gorges cesspool
(June 27, 2001) With only two years left before the water level is scheduled to rise behind the massive Three Gorges dam, Chongqing municipality has pledged to spend more than one billion dollars cleaning up the heavily polluted Yangtze River to prevent the dam’s 600-kilometre reservoir from becoming a cesspool.
Probe International 