The Scientific American gives an in-depth analysis of the looming environmental consequences of China’s Three Gorges Dam:
For over three decades, the Chinese government has dismissed warnings from scientists and environmentalists that its Three Gorges Dam—the world’s largest—had the potential of becoming one of China’s biggest environmental nightmares. But last fall, denial suddenly gave way to reluctant acceptance that the naysayers were right. Chinese officials staged a sudden about-face, acknowledging for the first time that the massive hydroelectric dam, sandwiched between breathtaking cliffs on the Yangtze River in central China, may be triggering landslides, altering entire ecosystems and causing other serious environmental problems—and, by extension, endangering the millions who live in its shadow.
Government officials have long defended the $24-billion project as a major source of renewable power for an energy-hungry nation and as a way to prevent floods downstream. When complete, the dam will generate 18,000 megawatts of power—eight times that of the U.S.’s Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. But in September, the government official in charge of the project admitted that Three Gorges held “hidden dangers” that could breed disaster. “We can’t lower our guard,” Wang Xiaofeng, who oversees the project for China’s State Council, said during a meeting of Chinese scientists and government reps in Chongqing, an independent municipality of around 31 million abutting the dam. “We simply cannot sacrifice the environment in exchange for temporary economic gain.”
