(February 23, 2007) China is on alert this year for the extremes of natural disasters. Water Resources Vice Minister E Jingping has warned local governments of the increasing possibility of floods in major rivers, and droughts elsewhere.
(February 10, 2007) China’s largest network for monitoring land subsidence, or land sinking, has passed appraisal tests, the China Geological Survey, a bureau of the Chinese Ministry of Land and Resources, said yesterday.
(August 25, 2006) The water level in the Yangtze River’s middle and lower reaches continues to fall and is threatening navigation along the waterway.
(August 14, 2006) The Yangtze is in the grip of a rare drought, with water in many sections of the river at historically low levels. Navigation authorities have reinforced patrols along the waterway, warning vessels against running aground.
(August 14, 2006) Lack of rain and heatwave making safe drinking water scarce.
(May 27, 2003) Abnormally heavy flooding on the Yangtze River this summer is expected to put the newly built Three Gorges dam to its first major test.
(September 12, 2002) The big dam will be ‘totally useless’ in the face of the most common type of Yangtze flood, a senior Chinese Academy of Sciences researcher writes.
(December 20, 2001) A senior Chinese water official has raised concerns about flood control on the Yangtze River, even after the Three Gorges dam is built.
(December 5, 2000) Continuous heavy rain over the past few days have caused a section of the Yangtze River to burst its banks in Yueyang, a city in central China’s Hunan Province, a local water resources official confirmed on Thursday.
(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.
(November 17, 2000) ‘The flood-control works in some areas are like old men suffering from the passing of years. We have taken actions to cure them, while we should not expect to make them healthy young men in one day," said a top Yangtze flood-control official.
(August 24, 1998) As the Yangtze River Valley is engulfed by China’s worst flooding in more than four decades, debate over whether the Three Gorges dam would have stopped this year’s flood has been revived.
Patricia Adams
Brady Yauch
Dai Qing
Fan Xiao
Lawrence Solomon
Mu Lan
Lisa Peryman
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