“Landslides, Relocation of Residents Among Costly Drawbacks of Yangtze Project.” From The Washington Post:
It was in this little village clinging to cliff sides over the Yangtze River that the environmental costs of China’s Three Gorges Dam began to add up, a down payment on what experts predict will be billions of dollars and years of struggle to contain the damage.
The first sign was just a crack in the terraced earth, about four inches wide and 35 feet long, villagers said. But engineers found that the crevasse betrayed the danger of a massive landslide. They judged the risk so great that most of Miaohe’s 250 farmers were temporarily evacuated. Fearing the hillside would never be safe again, the government started constructing a replacement village on a nearby plateau, blasted out of rock for increased stability. [Full Text]
[Image source: Workers collect floating debris from the Yangtze River at Wushan, in central China in this June 11, 2003 file photo. The amount of sewage dumped into China’s Yangtze River rose 3 percent in 2006 to a record level, state media said Wednesday Nov. 14, 2007. (AP Photo/Greg Baker, File)]
