From Reuters:
The slopes of Chenjialing Village have shuddered and groaned lately, cracking and warping homes and fields, and making residents fear the banks of China’s swelling Three Gorges Dam may hold deadly perils.
The vast hydro scheme is meant to subdue the Yangtze River, but as the water levels rise, parts of its shores have strained and cracked, dismaying scientists and officials and alarming villages such as Chenjialing in Badong County.
Xiang Chuncai, who has lived much of her 84 years on this hillside of orange groves above the Yangtze, recalled waking in fright last year to rattling windows and rumbling noises from the earth. The tremors returned several times in past months, residents of this village in Hubei province said. [Full Text]
Read also China’s rising dam brings wrenching exodus by Chris Buckley:
In a precarious apartment overlooking the Yangtze River, Xu Faxiu and her husband are among the hold-outs in China’s wrenching campaign to move 1.4 million residents for the vast Three Gorges Dam.
To make way for rising waters, the government has already resettled whole towns and villages to higher slopes or distant cities and provinces — an exodus that has brought protests of official corruption and inadequate compensation from displaced people, many of them poor farmers.
Before the waters peak at 175 meters next year, Xu, 51, and her sick husband Chen Kaishen must abandon “old Badong”, a steep maze of rotting concrete blocks and half-demolished homes. [Full Text]
