Problems with China's Three Gorges Dam

MIAOHE, China — Earlier this year, on a slope far above the mighty Yangtze River, Qu Wanfu felt the earth give way. Terrified, she dashed into her house.

"The earth was moving down the hillside," Qu recalled.

Luckily, the landslide stopped, saving this village of about 50 households from careening into the muddy waters of the Yangtze, the largest river in Asia, in a gorge far below.

A few bends downriver, the Three Gorges Dam, said to be the world's biggest civil works project, spans a mile and a half across the Yangtze. Nearly a year and a half after it was completed, the government still touts the $26 billion dam as a showcase project that limits disastrous seasonal flooding and generates vast amounts of electricity.

But authorities now admit that the dam is generating major problems. It's created a huge — and heavy — reservoir pressing against the mountains along the Yangtze, making them more prone to landslides. The deep reservoir stretches upriver about 370 miles, impeding the natural flushing action of the river and trapping pesticides, fertilizer and raw sewage. Downriver from the dam, water flows cleaner and faster, adversely affecting aquatic species adapted to sediment in the river.

Authorities are finally letting reports of the dam's problems reach the public in an apparent bid to pre-empt criticism should disaster unfold. And it's disaster that the official Xinhua news agency forewarned of in an unusually blunt report two weeks ago during a forum on the environmental consequences of the project.

"If no preventive measures are taken, the project could lead to catastrophe," the Sept. 26 Xinhua report said, paraphrasing unnamed "officials."

The report cited Tan Qiwei, the vice mayor of Chongqing, a sprawling city at the head of the reservoir, as saying that slopes along the Yangtze had collapsed in 91 places and a total of 22 miles of land along the river had caved in.

"We cannot take the problems too seriously. We should never sacrifice our environment in exchange for a flash of economic prosperity," Wang Xiaofeng, the head of the executive office of the State Council Three Gorges Project Construction Committee, told state media....

To make way for the reservoir, authorities relocated about 1.3 million people, moving them away from the rising river and allowing 100 or so towns to submerge slowly under floodwaters rising more than 500 feet. As new landslides loom, more relocations are taking place.

Now, it's the turn of the 300 or so residents of Miaohe, who dwell on a high mountain slope dotted with dwarf orange trees and fields of corn and sweet potatoes.

Mud-brick homes in Miaohe cracked when the first landslide hit April 11. The earth moved for a few seconds, then stopped. The ground shook again the next night, residents said, leaving 21 homes damaged. Afterward, officials ordered residents to move into a mountain tunnel a mile away for safety.

"We were forced to live in the tunnel for three months," said Han Yong, a 31-year-old farmer. "It's really wet and noisy in there."

...Han, the Miaohe resident, said the dam had been her village's bane: "There were no landslides before the dam was built."