Responding to Graeme Kelleher

(June 22, 2010) In his interview with chinadialogue’s editor, Isabel Hilton (In defence of dams, May 27), engineer and water-resource expert Graeme Kelleher says critics of China’s Three Gorges dam should accept the “facts” that the dam protects the environment by reducing coal burning and “saves thousands of Chinese people from being drowned in the floods of the Yangtze River every year.”

PNG tax reform, not overseas aid

(June 18, 2010) In the PNG news,  there is an article by Isaac Nicholas that quotes the results of a European Union funded geological survey. The survey data apparently revealed potentially large mineral deposits in the PNG Highlands. The minerals mentioned were copper, gold, silver, zinc, chromium and nickel.

Danjiangkou Reservoir: A tale of two watersheds

(June 16, 2010) In the ultimate photo-op this week, Danjiangkou Mayor Zeng Wenhua, with press in tow, ladled a cup of water out of his city’s reservoir and drank it "without hesitation" to demonstrate its purity. The Danjiangkou Reservoir—on the Hanjiang River, a branch of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River—is slated to provide Beijing with water by 2014, once the central channel of the South-North Water Diversion scheme is completed.