(June 19, 2000) Official zeal for more hydro development on Yangtze tributaries remains undampened by the financial and technical problems plaguing China’s massive Three Gorges dam. According to Chinese news sources, the State Planning Commission has approved plans for a third hydro dam on Qingjiang River, a major Yangtze tributary that joins the mainstream 100 kilometres downstream of Three Gorges.

‘There are better methods of electricity production being locked out in order to protect a bigger project like the Three Gorges,’ says Probe International’s Patricia Adams.

An inspection that is expected to last until May 23 will determine whether the right side of the Three Gorges dam is strong enough to hold water.

Construction crews finished the main wall of the world’s largest hydroelectic dam on Saturday, Xinhua News Agency reported. After 13 years of construction, the structure of the 185-meter-high (607 feet), 2,309-meter-long (1.4-mile-long) dam across the Yangtze River was completed at around 2 pm on Saturday.

The Three Gorges project will have earned enough revenue to have paid its construction costs less than a decade after coming into full operation, the project’s chief accountant says.

The Three Gorges hydropower station will become the centre for China’s power grid in 2011 when it goes into full operation with 32 power turbines, a senior official says.

‘Critics of the project – they are many, in China and abroad – have questioned whether building a giant dam is really scientific in the 21st century, when the United States and other nations are weighing the wisdom of damming their rivers.’

Now that China’s massive dam has been built, what will it mean for the environment?

Li Yongan, general manager of the company building the dam, outlined how the project would come in under budget in response to foreign news reports of ‘Western estimates’ that put the cost at between US$40 billion and US$50 billion.