Just after the State Council acknowledged that the massive Three Gorges Dam has had a negative social and environment impact, the corporation running the damn announced that they came up short in a recent audit. From the Wall Street Journal:
China Three Gorges Corp. said Sunday that the audit, conducted by the National Audit Office, had uncovered 31 “financial issues” related to “accounting, financial management, investment, bidding and corporate management,” the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
“The audit findings released by the NAO are a true reflection of our company’s problems,” Sha Xianhua, a vice manager of the company, was quoted by Xinhua as saying. “Ten of the problems mentioned in the audit findings have already been rectified, and we are still working on the other problems.”
The revelation of financial troubles at the world’s largest hydropower station came just days after China’s State Council released a surprise statement admitting the dam had created “urgent” social and environmental problems.
Activists speculated that the statement from the State Council might have been triggered by a severe drought affecting swaths of central and eastern China, which has forced officials to discharge massive amounts of water from the Three Gorges reservoir—prompting fears that rapidly falling water levels could lead to landslides or even earthquakes.
Read more about the Three Gorges Dam via CDT.