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As a Dam Closes, Chinese Tally Gain and Loss (CBF Alert!)
New York Times ^ | 6/9/03 | ERIK ECKHOLM

Posted on 06/09/2003 7:14:03 AM PDT by dead

ENGJIE, China, June 7 — There's an odd calm along this part of the Yangtze, no jubilation and no weeping, as the tawny waters lap several feet higher each day and a 350-mile stretch of this mightiest of rivers is finally transformed into a long narrow lake.

After decades of bitter debate, years of heavy construction and the uprooting so far of 700,000 people, the Three Gorges Dam has closed its gates.

On June 15, the reservoir will be filled to its interim level of 135 meters, or 443 feet above sea level. The next day, the first commercial ships will pass through the locks, heralding the eventual passage of ocean vessels hundreds of miles upstream to Chongqing, a booming metropolis in central China.

In August, two initial turbines from what will be the world's most colossal array of generators are to start spinning electricity — a down payment on the promised riches from a $25 billion megaproject with gains and perils that may be forever disputed.

A Chinese woman collected sweet
potato plants before the river
inundated her fields near Wushan.

"For the country as a whole, this project might be worthwhile," said Yang Hongwen, who runs an ailing small business in Fengjie, a city some 150 miles upstream of the dam.

"But from the perspective of the ordinary people around here, it was a mistake," he said, surveying what had been the lower half of a lively town of 100,000 and now resembles ground zero of an atomic blast, flattened for service as the lake bed and teems with people slaving to scavenge every ounce of steel.

Many of those resettled up to now — another 430,000 or more people must be moved from the area before the project is completed in 2009 — are already hurting for good land or jobs. For some longtime residents like Mr. Yang, nostalgia runs deep for the lost ancient city and the nearby scenic gorges that will soon be a little less deep and majestic.

But not everyone is unhappy. In a pattern repeated throughout China in this age of ebullient construction, the quick and the connected are making out fine, while the slow, the poor and the aged eat dust.

A few miles up river from the old town, a bright, new, high-rise Fengjie has sprung up in a miraculous six years. It is already home to 80,000 people and starting to bustle with characteristic Sichuanese color and cheer. Throughout the region, some enterprising types have made fortunes off the billions being spent on new towns, highways and bridges.

A woman walks up the docks in
Chongqing, China. The water is rising
on the Yangtze River with the start of the
Three Gorges Dam.

Worried most about their own livelihoods, few people here share Mr. Yang's concerns for the loss of scenery or cultural relics or the effects on the environment downstream, and few have thought about the pollution that many experts now see as the biggest headache for the project. Already, with the river waters stilled for little more than a week, a jump has been registered in E. coli, the bacterial marker of sewage contamination.

The closing of the dam on June 1 was a key turning point in a project that, by 2009, will see the lake surface raised by yet another 130 feet, flooding huge additional areas of town and country.

A visionary project long ago extolled long ago by Mao Zedong himself, the dam has come to symbolize the Chinese Communist Party's drive to conquer nature, and it is still touted as the mark of a great nation's arrival.

Any grandeur is hard to find in the fractured old town of Fengjie. A half-mile-wide swath of what had been a dense, decrepit, but happy warren of homes and markets and small factories has been blasted to rubble.

Many of the people of Fengjie, which will be
under water as soon as a portion of the Yangtze River
is flooded, have been relocated to new housing on higher ground.

Here, the giant engineering project has produced a scene out of the 19th century. Hundreds of men and women pound away at the tangled sea of concrete with picks and sledgehammers and bare hands, salvaging steel rods and bricks to earn perhaps $25 for a month of work.

Li Shinli, 51, heaved his pick under a slab of concrete that hung dangerously above him but was tantalizingly replete with steel rods.

"I'm trying to save up some money so my son can go to college," said Mr. Li, who like many of the rock-pile workers was from a nearby village where he earns little from growing grain.

"Yes this is dangerous," he said, waving to the hovering slab, "but we can't do anything about that."

"The people in my village don't really have any strong feelings about the dam," he said. "But at least it has given us a chance to earn a little money."

Shopkeepers and remaining residents on the ragged new edge of the dying town, laggards who will mostly have to move in the next year or two, grumble about stingy relocation funds and corruption.

"We've lived here for 20 years and this is our home," said Li Changshu, a woman in her late 50's who runs a small herb shop just yards from the edge of the rubble. By this week, she was more resigned than angry.

Because she and her husband never did obtain official classification as urban residents, she said, they have not been given an apartment or shop in the new city, as more fortunate Fengjie residents were. Now they wait for the paltrier compensation being offered to farmers and wonder, she said, where they will end up.

"There are lots of people here in this position," said Mrs. Li, who added with a chuckle that over the years she has sold aphrodisiacs from this now-condemned spot to all kinds of characters, police chiefs and criminals alike.

Like megaprojects anywhere, this one has been dogged by controversy and its true costs and benefits are as murky as the silt-laden Yangtze waters.

The benefits to shipping seem clear enough, though some worry about a potentially disastrous build-up of silt at the reservoir head near Chongqing.

As the world's largest hydroelectric project, if all goes to plan, the dam will support China's development and replace dozens of large coal or nuclear plants, an environmental plus.

The 1.4-mile wide dam, promoters long claimed, will tame the floods that have devastated the Yangtze basin for millennia. Hydrologists now say it will prevent some floods but that others, such as the most recent disastrous surge in 1998, may be little affected because they rise from swollen tributaries downstream of the dam.

The famed Three Gorges, honored through the centuries by painters and poets, will be diminished but still an attraction. Hundreds of tourist ships, now docked because of SARS fears, expect to ply the new lake.

Perhaps the greater cultural loss will be the archaeological sites, graves and temples that are being inundated. Some of the most prominent temples and relics have been moved, but countless more, including those never excavated, will be lost for good.

One of the chief sites, the White Emperor Temple, is on a hilltop near Fengjie, at the entrance to the famed gorges. Its main buildings lie just above the water line projected for 2009, but some lower buildings have already had to be demolished. A cave that had contained an important Buddhist sculpture has been cemented over, the figurine cut off the rock and moved.

"The temples and relics aren't a problem because they are being taken to high ground," said Pu Dongping, a 40-year-old rural woman who was overseeing construction of a huge retaining wall on the hillside below the temple.

Eighteen years ago, as early construction began, her husband parlayed his building skills into contracts that have gradually become larger and more complex. "We were just ordinary farmers, but we've gotten rich from the Three Gorges project," she said.

Within the last several years, as it became clear that the dam would actually be built, scientists have raised grave concerns about the industrial poisons, farm chemicals and sewage that have long poured into the Yangtze and out to the sea.

The government has belatedly scrambled to curb pollution and has plans for at least 19 new sewage treatment plants along the upper Yangtze, mainly in larger cities, but most are not yet complete, said Lei Xiongshu, a retired engineering professor, former national legislator and longtime skeptic about the dam.

"It's not enough just to have treatment plants," he said in a telephone interview. "You need to insure that all industrial and domestic waste, including sewage, is diverted to them for proper treatment, and we're a long way from that."

Already, he said, worrisome levels of E. coli bacteria have been registered in water backing up from the dam, which may render the lake water undrinkable.

But so far, the most nettlesome problem has been the resettlement of hundreds of thousands in a region of steep, overexploited land and a country with little empty arable areas.

According to official estimates, close to 700,000 people have already been moved, some to new and existing cities, some to farming areas and some to distant provinces. By 2009, officials say, the number must reach 1.13 million, including many people like Mrs. Li, in Fengjie, who have no obvious place to go.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: china; threegorges; threegorgesdam
(CBF - "Could Be Fiction" - my new standard disclaimer for all New York Times articles.)

Articles like this are so tricky for the agenda-editors - they can't praise the communists without enraging the environmentalists.

1 posted on 06/09/2003 7:14:03 AM PDT by dead
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To: dead
In this one instance, I don't mind praising them.

I have followed this project from the beginning, and it is an incredible achievement. Environmental issues be dammed, this thing is one hell of a project. The Chinese are big thinkers who know how to get things done.

While the Chinese are slowly scratching and clawing their way out of their communism, America seems determined to go the other way. We could not undertake such a project in America without it being stalled forever by left-wing special interest groups.
2 posted on 06/09/2003 7:24:09 AM PDT by Pukin Dog (Sans Reproache)
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To: Pukin Dog
Some of the most beautiful and some of the ugliest places in China will now be underwater. We ought to do the same thing to the entire state of California. Build one big ole honking dam and flood it. But the water would be to polluted for anything but turning turbines.
3 posted on 06/09/2003 7:31:45 AM PDT by Conspiracy Guy (Would you like to try our extra value meal?)
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To: Pukin Dog
While I applaud the overall idea, I just hope they have the technological abilities to pull it off.

If that thing crumbles in ten years, biblical numbers will die.

4 posted on 06/09/2003 7:42:42 AM PDT by dead
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To: dead
If that thing crumbles in ten years, biblical numbers will die.

To be brutally blunt; I think the Chinese government has decided that each outcome is potentially positive overall.

5 posted on 06/09/2003 7:44:50 AM PDT by Pukin Dog (Sans Reproache)
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To: Pukin Dog
I guess you're right. Either more fresh water for farmland irrigation or millions dead.

Either way, embarrassing critical food shortages are avoided.

6 posted on 06/09/2003 7:49:01 AM PDT by dead
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To: Pukin Dog
I have followed this project from the beginning, and it is an incredible achievement. Environmental issues be dammed, this thing is one hell of a project. The Chinese are big thinkers who know how to get things done.

The ability to build a dam such as Three Gorges is primarily a civil engineering feat. The managementy rquired to complete such a project is something that has been extant in Socialist and Communist regimes for years. getting the people who lived in the area that is to be flooded to move is actually far easier in a the Chinese nation because tehy do not have laws guaranteeing their private property rights or ownership of the real estate. In fact people who lived within the city mentioned for more than 20 years were not even entitled to teh Chinese version of "fair" compensation for what the government took from them. While I agree on the envirornmental restrictions and agree that this is apparently a great accomplishment the results will show as the engineering is tested by the real world conditions of the stress on the dam created by the lake. I note the Soviets built a large dam on the nile, the Asswan, which has never lived up to its promise due to silting in and other problems. No I am not stating this will happen merely that there can be some engineering problems that do not show up until they encounter real world stresses.

If due to corruption the dam has some inferior materials that could have a disaterous impact on downstream communities and on the eventual reputation of teh design team. In the USA the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapsed one day. and there have been other engineering failures over the years. They happen.

All in all I do agree, however, if everything continues to go as planned it will be a major benefit to China.

7 posted on 06/09/2003 7:51:08 AM PDT by harpseal (Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown)
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To: Pukin Dog
In 1930, Union Electric of St. Louis built a power dam on the Osage River in central Missouri, creating the world's largest (at the time)man-made impoundment called the Lake of the Ozarks (where we live).
As the Osage backed up, it created a 95 mile long, 55,000 sq. acre lake for recreation along with about 200 mw of hydropower. In the 1970's the Army Corps of Engineers built another dam above Lake of the Ozarks, called Truman Reservior, also with turbine generators.
Was the river ruined by the developments ? Well, it certainly was changed drastically. Do the benefits outweigh the negatives ? No question about it.
The only worry I have about Three Gorges is the quality of workmanship and the sandy nature of the gorges anchoring the dam.
8 posted on 06/09/2003 7:53:20 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks
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To: Eric in the Ozarks
I look at it this way:

Should Three Gorges ever fail, it will bring down the Communist government with it. The death of so many will cause the people to rise up in a way that will insure democratic rule from that point forward.

I think that silt is their biggest potential problem, but that can be managed. The scale of the project is breathtaking and I hope it is successful.
9 posted on 06/09/2003 7:58:36 AM PDT by Pukin Dog (Sans Reproache)
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To: Flurry
I like your idea. Of course you're not thinking BIG enough. We need to flood the entire I-5 corridor from Canadastan to Mexico.
10 posted on 06/09/2003 8:00:57 AM PDT by bigfootbob
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To: Pukin Dog
This is one instance where the environmentalists have good reason to be alarmed. The Answan Dam in Egypt has proven to be one of the worst environmental disasters in history. For thousands of years, the Nile floods brought much needed nutrients to the valley and river mouth. Now much of that farmland is worthless.
11 posted on 06/09/2003 8:05:42 AM PDT by Blood of Tyrants (Even if the government took all your earnings, you wouldn’t be, in its eyes, a slave.)
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To: dead
PF might be a more appropriate sub title/warning: PROBABLY FICTION
12 posted on 06/09/2003 8:13:18 AM PDT by Grampa Dave (Evil Old White Devil Californian Grampa for big Al Sharpton and Nader in primaries!)
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To: dead
Poet Li Bai must be rolling over in his grave. His famous poem "On Leaving Baidicheng at Dawn" is one of my favorites, and first introduced me to Li Bai --so many years ago. I hope he can still hear the monkeys calling him, even tho his beloved river will be changed..

I have very mixed feelings about this project. Since Li Peng ($@?%#$@#) was one of the vociferous backers, I had an immediate negative attitude --still do. If the horrendous problem of flooding can be solved - OK - but will it?

I hope the ghosts of Fengdu haunt those who pushed this project, if it fails.

13 posted on 06/09/2003 8:35:13 AM PDT by Exit148 (Just added another $3.06 to the Loose Change Club collection bag for the next Freep-a-thon!)
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To: bigfootbob
Sorry, I was being too conservative, you're right. We need the electricity.
14 posted on 06/09/2003 8:35:46 AM PDT by Conspiracy Guy (Would you like to try our extra value meal?)
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To: Pukin Dog
An interesting coincidence: Both the Osage and Yangtze are home to spoonbill catfish. These prehistoric critters are quite rare and because the Lake of the Ozarks Bagnell Dam prevents their spawn, the Missouri Conservation Commission raises and stocks these unusual fish in the lake and allows a snagging season each spring.
Wonder of the Chinese will do the same thing ?
15 posted on 06/09/2003 8:46:35 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks
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To: Blood of Tyrants
In addition, the Answan Damn is the Sword of Damocles hanging over the throat of Eygpt. Should Eygpt ever truely threaten Israel all it would take is one hardened tactical nuke strike on the damn base and Cario and everyone along the river would be gone. They might even be able to do it with conventional explosives (although it is one almighty big damn). Answan as a "monster" damn was a mistake; a number of lesser structures with diversion basins to control flooding would have been much more intelligent and useful. However, it is not as flashly and nowhere near as profitable for those that build things that big.
16 posted on 06/09/2003 10:28:00 AM PDT by Dogrobber
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To: Dogrobber
The dam was built by the Soviets. They really know their technology !
17 posted on 06/09/2003 11:46:56 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks
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BUMP
18 posted on 06/09/2003 4:53:50 PM PDT by HighRoadToChina (Never Again!)
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