China On Three Gorges Dam - "Remain Calm! All Is Well!" After 31 Die In Dam-Induced Landslide

[hatrack]

Beijing insisted today that its Three Gorges Dam project, the world's largest hydroelectric dam, is safe and will not harm the environment.

Chinese officials told a press conference that 12bn yuan (£780m) had been allocated to guard against landslides on the Yangtze River reservoir and that threats would be kept to a minimum as the water reached its peak. Thirty-one people died when a landslide crushed a bus last week on a tributary to the dam in Hubei province.

The statements today represent the latest government effort to reassure critics that the project is environmentally and geologically sound.

Scientists studying the Three Gorges area have claimed that rising waters have strained the already brittle shoreline, triggering landslides that may get worse when the waters reach their maximum 175 metres above sea level over the next two years. "I would describe it as effective control," said Wang Xiaofeng, director of the Three Gorges project construction committee. "Of course, effective control doesn't mean that in the future there won't be any landslides or threats that arise.

EDIT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,2217730,00.html

[tom_paine]

1. Our greatest "progress": To go with their Great Wall, a Great Algid Collapsing Bathtub!

Hooray for human ingenuity!

[NNadir]

2. The largest energy disaster in human history remains the Banqiao dam collapse.

More than 200,000 people died in 1975.

400 million people live downstream from Three Gorges, if memory serves me well.

I'm hard pressed not to feel ambivalent. The thing puts out the power of 18 large power plants, but damn, or dam or something.

It's scary. It really is.

[XemaSab]

3. As long as you don't define "environment"

As animals, fish, plants, antiquities, water quality, geology, or anything else covered under CEQA. :eyes:

[Dead_Parrot]

4. 100 now dead in energy disaster!

Sorry, I'm talking about the coal miners in the Ukraine.

Not heard of it? Don't give a shit? Go back to sleep, then.

Nothing to see here.



(Not aimed at Hatrack, for those of you who are wondering.)

[Eugene]

5. Some here did notice.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=122148

[Javaman]

6. so perhaps this is china's long term plan to control their booming population.nt