Dam "Three Gorges" Pecah!
Editorials, Washington Post, October 15, 2007-
FOR CHINA’S communist leadership, which gathers today for a major party congress, the gigantic Three Gorges Dam holds out the promise of abundant hydroelectric power and an end to devastating periodic floods along the Yangtze River. Yet from the moment they hatched a plan to build the colossal project, China’s leaders have known that its benefits would come at a high environmental cost. Undeterred, they ignored or repressed dissent about it. One prominent early critic, journalist Dai Qing, was jailed for 10 months after the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 1989; her book “Yangtze! Yangtze!” was suppressed. Even then, the threats posed by the $22 billion project in Hubei province were so evident that one-third of the delegates to China’s rubber-stamp national legislature either abstained or voted against it in 1993. Undaunted, the government began construction in 1994 and has relocated 1.4 million mostly poor rural villagers to make way for a 370-mile-long, 525-foot-deep reservoir. The dam’s first stage opened in 2003, permitting cargo vessels to travel from Shanghai to Chongqing; eventually, its turbines are supposed to generate 84 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year.
As recently as 2004, the official China Daily was still emitting happy talk about “achievements in environmental protection of the area.” But now comes word that the warnings of Dai Qing and others were true. And the source of the news is none other than the Chinese government. In fact, a “catastrophe” is possible if preventive steps are not taken promptly, the official Xinhua news agency said last week. Apparently, thickly populated river banks near Chongqing have been weakened by the project, and landslides — including one June 28 that killed four people — are a frequent occurrence. The new reservoir’s shoreline is collapsing in 91 places. In addition, the Yangtze is silting up because of the reduced flow of water, and pollutants are accumulating behind the dam — exactly as critics had predicted.
The authorities in China have a plan, of course: They will relocate 4 million more people over the next 10 to 15 years. This additional movement of people will have immense direct costs — financial and human — and will exacerbate serious land shortages and urban crowding in Chongqing and its surroundings. Chongqing is already one of the most congested and polluted cities in China. We suppose it’s good news that China’s leaders, consistent with a recent increase in official candor about the country’s environmental woes, are finally facing the facts about Three Gorges. But for many years to come, the dam will stand as a monument to their folly and their arrogance. http://chinaview.wordpress.com/
wek ngeri amet.......... itu kan megaproyek dam terbesar di dunia
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