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It was supposed to be one of the engineering feats of the 20th century. But instead the Three Gorges Dam across the mighty Yangtze River in China may prove to be an environmental catastrophe, officials have said in an unprecedented admission.For more than a decade Chinese officials have vaunted the world’s biggest hydropower project as the way to end centuries of deadly floods along the Yangtze and as a source of electricity to fuel the country’s economic boom. They ignored critics who cautioned that the dam-first proposed nearly a century ago and immortalised in a poem by Mao Zedong-was an environmental and ecological disaster waiting to happen.Now those same officials who oversaw construction of the £13 billion project have issued a rare public warning that surrounding areas are paying a heavy, and potentially calamitous, environmental price. Hundreds of thousands of people may have to be moved, in addition to the 1.3 million who have already been displaced.A report issued by the official Xinhua news agency, the mouthpiece for the Government, said: “There exist many ecological and environmental problems concerning the Three Gorges Dam. If no preventive measures are taken, the project could lead to catastrophe.” Officials and experts at a government forum listed a litany of threats to the environment, such as conflicts over land shortages, ecological deterioration as a result of irrational development and, especially, erosion and landslides on steep hills around the dam. Other authorities have already quietly cited anxieties about algae bloom downstream from the huge structure and a deterioration in aquatic life.To read more go to:
As in the days of Noah....
