Chicago Tribune's Three Gorges Dam Report
1/7/97
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Headline: Chicago Tribune's Three Gorges Dam Report
Source: patrick@irn.org (Patrick McCully)
Date: 1/7/97
Author: Liz Sly
pre-edited version of article which (supposedly) appeared in Chicago
Tribune 22 Dec 96
By Liz Sly
SANDOUPING, China-At a bend in this twisting, surging stretch of the
mighty Yangtze River, one of mankind's most ambitious efforts to conquer
nature is taking shape.
A giant crater marks the spot where the world's biggest and most
controversial dam is being built, just downstream from the famous Three
Gorges landmark. The pine-covered granite cliffs that give the region its
distinctive landscape have been gouged away on both banks of the river,
and already the first protusion of cement into the water is taking shape.
But this is just the beginning of the upheaval that the Three Gorges Dam
will wreak upon the river and the livelihoods of those it has supported
for thousands of years. All around the construction site, big signs
proclaim the date - November 15, 1997 -when the Yangtze will be dammed,
irrevocably changing the landscape of this ancient cradle of civilization.
Whether for better or worse, there is no disputing the gargantuan scale of
the project. By the time the dam is fully completed, 140 towns and 326
villages will be wiped off the map, submerged under 418 square miles of
water. In addition, 657 factories, 592 miles of highway and 139 power
stations will disappear. So too will untold quantities of potentially
priceless historical relics dating back to the Stone and Bronze ages.
Above all, an estimated 1.2 million people will have to leave their homes
in the biggest ever dam-forced human migration in history.
As China gears up for the crucial and sensitive task of moving them, the
questions that have dogged the dam's builders from the outset are
intensifying. Can it be done? Will it work? And perhaps, most importantly
of all, is it worth it?
China says it is. Officials acknowledge there are problems, but say they
will be outweighed by the benefits. They include curbing flooding in the
lower reaches of the river, which bursts its banks with fatal regularity
every year. The dam will provide the equivalent of 10 nuclear power
station's worth of electricity, which China badly needs, without adding to
the problem of greenhouse gases.
"The Three Gorges Dam will have positive and negative impacts, but the
positive impact will prevail," said Yuan Goulin, vice president of the
China Three Gorges Project Corporation.
The dam's critics, most of them from the West, say the dam's ability to
control floods may be limited, because the river's lower reaches are fed
by three other tributaries that also contribute to flooding. A string of
smaller dams would have had the same effect on floods and produced as much
electricity, without as many environmental side effects, according to
Probe International, a Canadian group that has campaigned against the dam.
But the debate over the Three Gorges Dam is as much about politics as it
is about the mechanics of dam buiilding. To China, the dam is an
expression of national pride, offering proof that China has joined the
ranks of the world's developed nations - one that is capable of building
the world's biggest dam, taming the world's third mightiest river and
harnessing its strength to provide the electricity needed to fuel China's
economic growth and modernization.
The dam is being hailed as ranking alongside the 2,000 year old Great Wall
of China in its national significance. Chairman Mao Zedong wrote a poem in
which he dreamed of building the dam. Premier Li Peng has made it the
centerpiece of his political career, promoting it despite the objection of
an unprecedented one third of delegates to the National People's Congress,
normally regarded as a rubber stamp for party decisions.
Since then, domestic dissent has been silenced. "Any experts who disagree
have been forced to be silent.," said a Chinese environmentalist who
requested anonymity. "It's become so politicized, it's no longer a solely
scientific matter. If you're against the dam, you're against China."
China also blames politics for the criticisms, accusing the West of
seeking to curtail China's modernization. Most Western governments, many
Western companies and major institutions such as the World Bank have
refused to offer help, saying there are too many questions about its
viability.
"It's because of politics, not technical problems, that they are against
the dam," said Gan Wei Yi, the dam's chief engineer, who spent 2 years
researching the project at Chicago's Northwestern University before
construction began. "I know it can be done, because I studied dams in
America."
"The Hoover dam was also controversial, but they built it anyway," he
continued. "Why? For the people. This is natural power for humans, so why
don't we use it?"
One problem is that China is building the dam too late. The Hoover Dam,
constructed in the 1930s, kicked off a half-century dam building boom, in
which virtually every nation rushed to build a mega-dam to prove its
status in the world. But in the past 10 years, large scale dams have been
widely discredited among experts as more trouble than they're worth. Great
rivers no longer reach the sea, fisheries have been wiped out, and
unforeseen problems of sedimentation have made many dams worthless or even
dangerous, said Patrick McCully of the California-based group
International Rivers Network.
But perhaps the biggest single problem with the dam is that it is just too
big, said Husayn Anwar, managing director in Beijing of Environomics, an
environmental consultancy. "When you build a dam so big, no matter how
much you know, you never know everything," he says.
On such a scale, microscopic miscalculations could result in mega-
disasters, he said. A quarter of China's population - 400 million people -
live along the Yangtze's banks downstream of the river and its fertile
plains provide a third of the country's food. If planners have
underestimated the extent to which the dam will reduce the river's flow,
millions of people's livelihoods could be ruined. And then there is the
danger of a breach - in an area China acknowledges has a "slight seismic"
risk. Just as the scale of the dam dwarfs all others, so would the scale
of a catastrophe should the dam burst.
But the dam's builders say they have found solutions to all these problems
and will press ahead regardless of the skeptics. "We can declare to the
world with confidence that Chinese people have the high aspiration and
firm capability to accomplish this great achievement," said Yuan.
Now, two years into construction, the scale of the project is becoming
clear, as are some of the problems. From the vantage point of a 600 foot
concrete platform that will be extended 1.4 miles across the river to form
the dam, the river below appears as a thin, greenish stream, dwarfed by
the immensity of the edifice being constructed around it. Two cranes and
an earth mover are at work, but so too are people, carrying stones on
bamboo poles and pouring cement by hand.
There is however no sign of the 40,000 strong work-force the dam builders
promised; work has been slowed by an unforeseen cement shortage, local
officials say.
There are also questions about where China will find the money. Originally
put at $10 billion, the dam's price tag is now officially estimated at $25
billion, though Chinese officials privately concede it may go higher than
that. Some Western estimates have put the eventual cost at $50 billion. So
far, however, China has raised only $100 million in foreign investment,
and it needs to find $7 billion more in private investment by 2003, when
the dam will start generating electricity and paying for itself.
But perhaps the biggest challenge of all is the task of moving the 1.2
million people who will lose their homes. It is that, more than anything
else, that has made foreign governments and institutions queasy about
associating with the dam.
"It's the human rights angle that is the most objectionable, on the
grounds of the misery that is being caused by resettlement, and the
repression of any anti-dam voices," said McCully.
Chinese officials admit that some people are unhappy about leaving their
homes, but say "persuasion" has been effective in changing their minds.
"There is indeed a sentiment among some people that home is better than
anywhere else," said Wang Jiang Wen, director of the resettlement bureau
in the town of Yichang.
"But the local people have a natural sentiment of dignity and yearning for
economic development, so they are happy to hand over their land for the
sake of the nation," he said.
It is difficult to gauge whether that is true in an authoritarian state
like China. Journalists invited to meet with those affected by the dam are
accompanied by government officials, who closely supervise interviews and
prompt peasants on how to answer questions.
As local party cadres looked on, peasant farmer Lu Zheng Xu, who was among
the first to be relocated to make way for the dam site, said that she was
happy in her new home, half a mile uphill from her old one, and half the
size. "Everyone agrees with the government that resettlement is good for
the country and the people," said Lu, who was compensated with a plot of
land less than one tenth the size of her original farm.
But even in China it is difficult to suppress all criticism. At a bridge
overlooking the dam site, a peasant woman in a checked jacket exploded
with anger when asked how the local people viewed the dam. "They took our
land and gave us nothing in return," she fumed, before government
officials chased her away. "Village cadres have been arrested for stealing
money that was supposed to go to us."
Officials say the relocation program is proceeding smoothly, and that all
those moved will receive compensation in cash and kind to start new lives.
But with less than 10 percent of the relocations complete, and less than
a year to go before the river is dammed, most of the work lies ahead.
For hundreds of miles around the dam site, in previously uninhabited
territory, hillsides are being levelled and pine trees uprooted in a
frenzied race to rebuild the towns, factories and facilities that must all
be duplicated before the waters rise.
There are already signs that the effort is running into problems. When
Premier Li visited the site in October, he warned the local authorities
responsible for the relocation not to divert funds for the program to
other uses - and local officials confirmed that there have been incidences
of such diversion.
There have already been reports of disturbances in at least two
communities unhappy about the prospect of being moved, and local
authorities responsible for relocation are said to be bitterly divided,
with many senior officials privately critical of the program and fearful
of the upheaval it may cause in one of the most densely populated and
impoverished regions of China.
Most are peasant farmers whose ancestors have farmed the banks of the
Yangtze for thousands of years. They will have to move to higher, steeper
ground, where the land is less suitable for farming, and many will have to
find new ways to earn a living because there is simply not enough
alternative arable land for redistribution.
In Xujiacong, a quaint rural village scented by tangerine and pine trees
and fed by trickling mountain streams, 1,846 peasants are preparing to
leave their homes before they are submerged. But of them, only 65 will be
given new land to farm; the rest will have to find jobs, said village
chief Wang Kei Dang.
Most villagers make their living growing citrus fruits, and it will take
years for new trees to produce fruits. One, a gray-haired peasant woman
dressed in gray, refused to answer any questions about the dam. "No
comment," she replied repeatedly, despite the presence of five local party
cadres prodding her to voice enthusiasm.
That may be about as far as dissent goes. "They will move. They have to
move. The water is coming," said the environmentalist. "This is China.
What choice do they have?"
They don't have much choice, acknowledged Wang, the resettlement director.
A Chinese law dating back to the 1950s obliges citizens to give up land
for state projects, he said. And just to make sure, the State Council
passed a decree in 1993 specifically criminalizing the "disruption of
public order" because of the Three Gorges Dam.