Category: Three Gorges Probe

Director of Yunnan Environmental Protection Bureau visits Nu River dam site

(January 16, 2001) On 10 March, the Director of Yunnan Environmental Protection Bureau, Wang Jian-hua, led a 7-people delegate from the Bureau office, Planning and Finance Office, Pollution Control Office and the Institute of Environmental Science, to conduct a site visit in Baoshan Prefecture.

Yellow River’s thirst for water brings shortages into light

(January 16, 2001) Although he lives beside the Yellow River, China’s second longest and popularly known as China’s Mother river, Du Ping is very concerned about water supply, which was the cause in a drop of his income last year. The farmer in Chongxing Town, northwestern China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, used to plant rice on his third of a hectare farm, but switched to maize last year as it requires less water.

China’s giant dam faces huge problems

(January 7, 2001) When China started building the giant Three Gorges Dam here in 1993, its leadership sought to use the undertaking — the country’s most ambitious engineering project since the Great Wall — to highlight the superiority of its socialist system. But now, halfway into the construction, some Chinese officials, engineers and activists say the project has instead become a testimony to malfeasance, incompetence and systemic weakness.

China’s thirst for energy

(December 6, 2000) China’s environmental degradation from its rapid, no-holds barred industrialisation has reached the point where it is now interfering with future growth. Bodies such as the World Bank have estimated that the cost of environmental pollution is equivalent to several percentage points of GDP.

Collapses found at Yangtze River banks

(November 28, 2000) Officials were busy reinforcing embankments in a section of the Yangtze River China’s longest yesterday after collapses in three major areas. The Xiaoxiang Morning Post reported yesterday that the collapses one as long as 600 metres in the Yueyang section of the river in Central China’s Hunan Province were causing great concern as the flood season officially began yesterday.

Three Gorges dam reservoir will trigger earthquakes, say experts

(November 23, 2000) Guangzhou Daily reports that 100 experts from the Chinese mainland and Taiwan attended a mid-October conference at the Three Gorges dam site to discuss dam-related technical issues, including whether the filling of the dam’s reservoir would trigger earthquakes. The experts agreed that the weight of the water in the 600-kilometre Three Gorges dam reservoir is likely to cause earthquakes, but their magnitude will not be very large, ranging from 4.0 to 5.5 on the Richter scale.