(March 31, 2004) The company building the Three Gorges dam has signed purchase contracts with two Chinese firms and Alstom of France for the 12 hydropower generating units destined for the right-bank powerhouse of the Three Gorges dam.

(April 1, 2004) Citing ‘worrisome’ levels of industrial pollution, China’s state environmental agency has acknowledged that pollution-control efforts in the Three Gorges reservoir area have not gone as well as planned, China Daily reports.

(December 13, 2005) Millions living along the Yangtze River are hopeful that the big dam will finally tame the unruly river. But observers who have studied China’s efforts to curb the Yangtze via the massive construction project are far less upbeat.

(December 17, 2005) The Three Gorges Project Corp. plans to issue bonds worth five billion yuan (US$600 million) to domestic investors.

(December 18, 2005) Yichang, near the Three Gorges dam, is planning various events this fall ‘to showcase the emerging world-class hydropower city,’ Xinhua reports.

(December 21, 2005) Police in eastern China detained 40 people who had demanded to be sent back to their homes in the southwest which they were forced to leave to make way for the giant Three Gorges dam, a rights group said on the weekend.

(December 27, 2005) The Economist asks: What happens to the villagers slated for resettlement who dare to protest? ‘We don’t dare to speak out,’ one villager says. ‘If we do, we’ll be arrested.’

(December 27, 2005) Scientists in China are preparing a drastic rescue plan for one of the planet’s rarest animals – a dolphin with the misfortune of living in one of China’s busiest and most polluted rivers.

(December 28, 2005) With cracks to fill and toxins to remove before the water rises next year, the people of the Yangtze can only hope no one cuts any fatal corners, John Gittings writes.

(December 28, 2005) The downstream cofferdam was demolished on July 1, two months ahead of schedule, Xinhua reports.

(December 29, 2005) Project officials still need to raise US$7.2 billion to complete construction of the world’s biggest dam.

(October 12, 1999) Environmental campaigners say the Yangtze is just the latest, biggest example of the flipside of China’s ‘economic miracle’ and that the Three Gorges dam, by slowing the river’s flow, will worsen the pollution.

(September 27, 1999) Electronic triggers will control 2,540 detonators, which will set off 971 consecutive explosions around the cofferdam when it is blown up on June 6, Xinhua reports.

(August 31, 1999) Two rows of ‘bubble curtains,’ resembling car air-bags, will be set in an effort to protect the main dam wall by absorbing 50 to 70 per cent of the energy from the huge blast that will demolish the top of the cofferdam Tuesday afternoon, Xinhua reports.