Record floods raise questions about China's Three Gorges Dam
excerpt:
"The company running the Three Gorges Project also said on Saturday that downstream water discharges had been halved since Jul 6, "effectively reducing the speed and extent of water level rises on the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze". The total amount of stored floodwater had now reached 88 per cent of the reservoir's total capacity, it added.
But parts of the Yangtze, its tributaries and major lakes like the Dongting and Poyang have hit record levels anyway.
Fan Xiao, a Chinese geologist and long-standing critic of giant dam projects, said the storage capacity at Three Gorges amounts to less than 9 per cent of average floodwater.
"It can only partially and temporarily intercept the upstream floods, and is powerless to help with floods caused by heavy rainfall in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River," he said.
Fan said Three Gorges and other major dam projects could even make flooding worse by altering the flow of sedimentation down the Yangtze. The project's need to generate electricity has also undermined flood control, he said."
Whats it look like 6 days later?