Many Western experts fretted about the certain environmental havoc from China’s huge Three Gorges dam even before a single bulldozer moved dirt for it. But when the official news portals for China highlight them and warn that the project threatens disaster you might wonder whether those early worries were far understated.

At a two-day conference in Hubei Province Chinese officials and environmental scientists compared notes over the damages from the world’s largest, and still unfinished, hydroelectric project. Not good. Huge landslides along the growing reservoir’s shores, ecological degradation, land shortages, algae blooms are on the official list. A drought has worsened things. Even invasions by rats are blamed on the project. One report, picked up widely in media there and around the world, is that scores of slides triggered waves as high as 50 meters (right, about 160 feet high which seems impossible unless they’re maybe talking about the splash at the nose of the crashing hillside). Water sent rushing downstream into the Yangtse from the dam is eroding banks, too. A big scientific team is looking at things further. The dam is just part of an ongoing eco-catastrophe in the watershed with about 400 miles of the Yangtse in critical condition, it says here.

Chinese media reports include this shorty in China Daily, and a longer one at the China.Org news portal. Xinhua has it too. An analysis of the news is found in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post by Stephen Chen (registration required).

Outside outlets have jumped on the news:

Wall Street Journal Shai Oster (with a useful map) notes that Zinhua used the phrase “could lead to catastrophe” in early reports, language dropped later. One official even mentioned, and endorsed, an earlier WSJournal article on problems. Oster writes ; The Times (UK) Jane MacCartney filed from Beijing and called the reports “an unprecedented admission of blame” by Communist Party officials ; Financial Times (UK) Jamil Anderlini, also from Beijing and also amazed by the blunt Chinese reports; The Guardian (UK) Jonathan Watts ; National Post/CanWest Aileen McCabe from Shanghai; Voice of America ; AP ; BBC ;

EVEN WORSE, RELATED WATER NEWS FROM CHINA:

The New York Times appears not to be reporting the Three Gorges story directly. It should — but it also does it one better. Today (Fri) brings a long, p. 1 report from Jim Yardley datelined from a provincial capital, Shijiazhuang. Part of the paper’s “Choking on Growth” China series, it details the nation’s headlong rush toward water catastrophe. He portrays a half century of heedless drilling for wells, dumping of pollutants, and rapid draining of aquifers — all while wasteful industries consume enormous amounts of water compared to counterparts in more developed, well-regulated countries. China’s industrialized north may soon be out, as in O-U-T, of groundwater. All know the air is foul. Well, the water is wretched too. The Three Gorges Dam story confirms suspicions. The Times enterprisingly puts it in a larger and more disturbing context.

Dept of Irony: On SciDevNet, from writer Jia Hepeng, is a story with this hed: China to share disaster expertise.

-CP

This entry was posted on Friday, September 28th, 2007 at 10:06 am and is filed under Environment & Energy Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.