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Three Gorges Dam nears completion, critics fear catastrophe
By David Stanway
INTERFAX CHINA
Shanghai. May 12. INTERFAX-CHINA - The China Three Gorges Project
Corporation (CTGPC) is keen to emphasize the virtues of its flagship
hydropower dam on the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. The state-owned
company recently launched a propaganda campaign entitled "Three Gorges
Project: The Harmonious Development Humanity and Nature", a photography
exhibition which will demonstrate how the project "harnesses and develops
the Yangtze" and explore the "successes [the project has contributed] to
China's hydropower development and the protection of its environment".
Despite all the efforts to stress the positive benefits of the controversial
multibillion-dollar project, the company's spokesperson, Yan Fei, was
reluctant to discuss the early completion of the dam when contacted by
Interfax, and had no details about the progress of the remaining generating
units to be installed on the right bank. She was also unable to give any
details about plans to build another batch of underground turbines.
Installation on that right bank has, in fact, already begun, with the
assembly of the first unit, No. 26, beginning on May 11. According to the
vice-general manager of CTGPC, Cao Guangjing, speaking at Yichang on Friday
May 12, the entire 26-unit project will be completed by the end of 2008, a
year ahead of schedule. He insisted that the rapid progress on the project
would not affect the quality of construction, and would enable the project
to generate an extra 70 bln kWh in electricity.
Workers were also busy over the Labor Day holidays excavating and
reinforcing the housing for the underground generators, the international
tendering for which will get underway later in the year.
The construction of the Dam itself is expected to be completed on May 20.
The completion comes about nine months ahead of schedule, and the news was
greeted with considerable fanfare in the official domestic media. CTGPC
insists that the project has been successful beyond the dreams of the
developers and that none of the disasters envisaged by opponents have even
come close to reality, but the opponents themselves believe that the
troubles have only just begun.
The motive for pushing the schedule forward is very clear, says Professor
Fan Xiao, a geologist and hydropower expert at the Sichuan Tourism
Geological Research Center, but it brings additional burdens to a project
already fraught with complications.
"A senior official with the CTGPC admitted in a TV interview that the
revenues from [additional] electricity production would be considerable,"
Fan told Interfax.
Once the main dam, 2,309 m long and 185 m high, is completed, the water
level of the reservoir will rise once again, reaching 156 m by October. It
will rise again to 175 m in 2009, by which time all 26 of the generating
units will have been put into operation.
But in the rush to earn profits and cover some of the spiraling costs of
construction, the operators are overlooking some of the problems, Fan
believes. In a recent article for the Chinese National Geographic magazine,
he noted that original models suggested that sedimentation would threaten
the port at Chongqing within 20 years, but the process could now
accelerated.
"This was just a simulation, which means the result may turn out to be more
serious," Fan told Interfax.
Surrounding areas are well aware of the problems they are facing as a result
of the Three Gorges impoundment. One reason why Chongqing has invested RMB
1.5 bln (USD 187.5 mln) to build a new port at Cuntan, according to Fan, was
the fact that the current port at Jiulongpo would soon be immobilized by
silt streaming down the upper reaches of the Yangtze and accumulating close
to the dam.
The never-ending battle against nature continues, and each solution creates
further problems for the army of government experts assigned to monitor
construction, who respond to each and every potential crisis with a new set
of measures, systems and projects. Silt build-ups at the dam lead to plans
to trap the silt further upstream in Sichuan and Yunnan by constructing two
massive new dams. The authorities insist that they can avert potential
landslides by implementing a monitoring system, and if plant species are
endangered by the rising waters, why not set up a gene bank in order to help
preserve biodiversity?
CTGPC has been given the go-ahead to build two massive new hydropower plants
at Xiluodu and Xiangjiaba, both on the Jinsha River, the Yangtze's western
branch. The two projects, with a combined generation capacity that will
exceed the Three Gorges facility, are being constructed partly in order to
alleviate the silt pressures flowing in from upstream. "Building more dams
to relieve silt build-ups only transfers the problem upstream," said
Patricia Adams, the executive director of Probe International, a
Toronto-based pressure group, in a telephone interview with Interfax.
Some critics have even suggested that the benefits of the Xiluodu and
Xiangjiaba projects has been exaggerated in order to provide more work for
the engineers, technicians and laborers on the CTGPC payroll as construction
at the Three Gorges comes to an end. Construction at Xiluodu was officially
launched at the end of last year.
An additional 80,000 people are to be relocated in 2006, according to
official figures, but experts estimate that in the rush to raise the water
level and generate as much electricity as possible, the figure may be much
higher. Fan notes that the slope of the reservoir will be crucial. A slope
at the upper edge of the reservoir in Chongqing would mitigate the problems
of silt, but it would also increase the number of displaced farmers, and the
developers are currently debating which is the best option, Fan Xiao wrote
in Chinese National Geographic magazine.
Each new step in the mammoth project is greeted with dismay by its
opponents, and they are keen to limit what they believe will be irreversible
damage to the region's geology. The higher the water level, the greater the
possibility of disaster, they claim. "53 scientists have signed a petition
saying that the depth of the water should not go past 156 m," said Patricia
Adams.
"The China People's Political Consultative Conference submitted a report to
the State Council last year, objecting to the earlier-than-scheduled
completion of the 156 m [water level] target," said Fan Xiao. "But the
CTGPC insisted on fulfilling its plan, and no support was given to the
opponents in the end."
The Chinese government, with their battalions of environmentalists,
geologists, meteorologists, archeologists and hydrologists, insist that they
have done everything in their power to minimize the problems that might
transpire from the world's biggest water project, but Patricia Adams told
Interfax that the efforts were far from sufficient. She said that the
Chinese government have "ignored the real costs of the Three Gorges in order
to justify a bad decision".
The government have said that they have put in place measures and monitoring
systems aimed at reducing the threat of landslides, reservoir-induced
seismicity, water pollution and sedimentation, but Adams is skeptical. "If
anything," she said, "they [the risks] have been confirmed. These problems
just cannot be addressed, and short of draining the reservoir, nothing can
be done to avert them."
"As long as the reservoir is filled even at a low level," she said, "they
need a state-of-the-art seismic monitoring system, which they don't have.
They need a warning system and an evacuation plan, which they don't have."
"{The Dam] is a huge risk introduced into the river valley," Adams said,
"threatening not only those communities that live within the flood zone
around the reservoir, but the millions of people downstream from the dam
itself that is at risk of overtopping, perhaps structural damage and, god
forbid, catastrophic failure."
Echoing Fan Xiao, she said that priority had always been given to the
profits of the state-owned operator of the project.
And while the problems associated with relocated migrants are severe, they
can at least be resolved, financially. "But they cannot alleviate the
geological problems," she said.
China says that the advantages of hydropower are self-evident. The fuel,
water, is renewable and the cost of generation is cheap. But the government
are still forced to "distort the electricity market", says Adams. "In order
to protect these big dams, all competitors are kept out in order to
guarantee profits. The cost of 8-9 cents per kWh is also much more
expensive than other sources of power, but it is subsidized by the
government. The price people are being charged is 3 cents, which means
there are terrible distortions."
"For political reasons, these big dams are being protected from financial
consequences and the costs of the impact on downstream communities," she
said.
Hydropower projects "are perfect crucibles for generating corruption", she
said. A more transparent and decentralized system would expose the Three
Gorges Project as inefficient and uncompetitive.
"Decommissioning does happen when the operators have to relicense their dam
and undergo cost-benefit analysis. When the real costs of dams are
analyzed, decommissioning starts to happen."
Many are worried about the potentially catastrophic consequences of the
Three Gorges Dam. It may continue to operate smoothly for a few years, but
its operation span is estimated to last a century. Fan Xiao notes in China
National Geographic that although a number of problems have already arisen
as a result of the impoundment of the dam, it may take twenty years before
the full extent of the damage manifests itself.
New dams being constructed in China are "benefiting from the propaganda push
caused by the Three Gorges," said Adams. The proposed Nu River projects in
Yunnan Province are "riding the waves of Three Gorges propaganda, the
absence of good analysis and the distortions in the electricity market."
The government have justified the hydropower boom as a vital fuel for
economic growth in some of China's more impoverished regions. "The need for
economic growth is a legitimate and noble question, but the real question is
whether or not hydro dams deliver it, and the answer is no," said Adams.
"The local people get all the costs and none of the benefits," she said.
Large-scale dams are a symptom of centralized control and the state monopoly
over the power industry. "If you're a community in Yunnan Province what you
need is a decentralized system that you can control yourselves, where the
costs and benefits can be controlled by yourselves."
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