Tag: Probe International

Not what you bargained for: China’s massive water scheme delivering polluted goods

(July 12, 2010) While Chinese officials continue to forge ahead with an expensive scheme to move water from the Yangtze river in the south of the country to water-starved cities in the north, fears concerning its cleanliness are surfacing once again. According to a recent report, authorities are concerned over the poor water quality in the eastern leg of the South North Water Diversion project.

To little surprise, environmental programs at Three Gorges are falling short

(July 5, 2010) As the environmental problems continue to plague the massive Three Gorges dam, officials are falling way behind on programs to contain the pollution caused by its construction. Less than a fifth of the “water environment” programs laid out in a ten year plan in 2001 have been completed, while all nine of the projects to control pollution from ships have not begun, according to Vice-Minister of Environmental Protection Zhang Lijun.

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.”

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.