China's Three Gorges Dam Completed

[Feenix566]

China's Three Gorges Dam, by the Numbers
Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
June 9, 2006

Using enough explosives to level 400 ten-story buildings, China demolished the last barrier holding back the mighty Yangtze River from the Three Gorges Dam on Tuesday, according to government-controlled media.

At 1.4 miles (2.3 kilometers) long, Three Gorges is one of the world's largest dams, and one of the most controversial public works in modern times.

...

The main dam's construction was completed last month amid much fanfare.

"This is the grandest project the Chinese people have undertaken in thousands of years," Li Yongan, general manager of the Three Gorges Corporation, told the London Times on May 20.

At its peak the construction team numbered some 26,000 Chinese and foreign employees.

Dam First Proposed in 1919

Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Republic of China, first suggested a dam on the Yangtze River in central China's Hubei Province. He believed the structure could protect river communities from deadly floods.

Communist leader Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) also supported the concept, but construction didn't begin until 1993, 17 years after Mao's death.

A Hundred Lives, Billions of Dollars

Chinese state media reports that over a hundred workers died during the lengthy construction project.

Economic costs also ran high. Official reports place the price tag in the 24-billion-U.S.-dollar range. Critics say that actual costs could be several times the stated amount.

Over a Million People Displaced

The dam's 410-mile-long (660-kilometer-long) reservoir will flood about 244 square miles (632 square kilometers) of land—including well over a thousand towns and villages.

Some 1.3 million people (another disputed number) have been or will be relocated.

The Three Gorges plan includes compensation for the dispossessed, such as payments and new homes and jobs. But these efforts have been plagued by widespread local corruption and complaints that funds aren't reaching the intended recipients.

Dozens of architectural and cultural sites will also disappear under the reservoir. Among the most notable are relics of the ancient Ba people, who lived in the region some 4,000 years ago.

300,000 Killed in 20th-Century Floods

Chinese authorities estimate that some 300,000 people were killed in the 20th century's largest Yangtze River floods.

Officials believe that the dam will protect some 15 million people from such deadly waters, as well as 1.5 million acres (607,000 hectares) of farmland.

The wall is built to weather floods of a once-in-a-century severity. But some scientists have expressed concern about earthquake activity in the area, and the unlikely event of a breach could have catastrophic consequences.

50 Percent Drop in Delta Sediment

Environmentalists have warned that the dam will reduce downstream nutrient and sediment flow and seriously impact neigboring river and seacoast ecosystems.

A study published in the April 2006 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters suggests that such changes may already be underway.

Researchers reported that ratios of silicon to nitrogen in brackish coastal waters fell from 1.5 in 1998 to 0.4 in 2004. Sediment loading was found in places to be half of pre-dam levels.

Such changes could harm plentiful coastal fishing grounds and subject tidal wetlands to increased erosion.

18,000-Megawatt Turbine Target

Twenty-six turbines (scheduled for operation in 2008) are designed to produce more than 18,000 megawatts of electricity—twenty times the power of Hoover Dam.

In 1993 that figure was thought sufficient to provide an amazing 10 percent of China's total energy needs. During years of construction, however, the nation's growing appetite for power has reduced that number to perhaps 3 percent of the current demand.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...orges-dam.html

[86Dude]

When the little commies aren't busy stealing all our technology they can be some pretty productive chinks. A damn impressive dam.