Massive Garbage Islands Threaten To Shut Locks On 3 Gorges Dam - Masses Dense Enough To Walk On

[hatrack]

BEIJING — Thousands of tons of garbage washed down by recent torrential rain are threatening to jam the locks of China's massive Three Gorges Dam, and is in places so thick people can stand on it, state media said on Monday.

Chen Lei, a senior official at the China Three Gorges Corporation, told the China Daily that more than 3,000 tons of trash was being collected at the dam every day, but there was still not enough manpower to clean it all up.

"The large amount of waste in the dam area could jam the miter gate of the Three Gorges Dam," Chen said, referring to the gates of the locks which allow shipping to pass through the Yangtze River.

The river is a crucial commercial artery for the upstream city of Chongqing and other areas in China's less-developed western interior provinces. Pictures showed a huge swathe of the waters by the dam crammed full of debris, with cranes brought in to fish out a tangled mess, including shoes, bottles, branches and Styrofoam.

EDIT

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38517934/ns/world_news-asiapacific/

[Oregone]

1. They left it there on purpose for the Baiji to play on!

As soon as they find one alive, Im sure itll enjoy its new habitat

RIP Chinese River Dolphin

[Champion Jack]

2. "there was still not enough manpower to clean it all up."

In China? WTF??!

[Xenotime]

3. My thoughts exactly. There was enough manpower to create it.

[femrap]

4. Isn't it comforting in

a strange way to realize that 'management' everywhere is as stupid and ineffective as ours?

If this dam blows, well, the number of deaths will be catastrophic. And many of the manufacturers who depend on this dam for energy will go down...which could mean shortages of certain things that only China makes.

Oh well, gotta find the cheapest labor, right management?

I saw a slideshow of the dam this morning. One tiny little crane is surrounding by tons and tons of garbage from upstream....see, the peasants throw all their garbage into the river. There is no garbage pick-up. Mother Nature is pissed.

[XemaSab]

8. I wish I had the reference for this

but I read an article about a sanitation conference that was held somewhere in Latin America, and they quoted someone like the Mexican director of public works as saying "Traditionally the developing world has operated under the assumption that first you modernize your industries, then you get advanced sewage and garbage disposal. This is exactly backwards, however... the countries that first modernize sewage and garbage disposal are then able to modernize their industries."

China is such an interesting case study for so many things, the least of which is how much industrial development you can create if you really don't care about the environment. Soon it will be an interesting case study in how little true modernization you can get with a completely trashed country. (Honestly, it's like something out of Dickens. The English did manage to clean up their country, but the value of the resources that were lost can never be measured.)

Hell, maybe the Chinese should just pop a WTE generator right there at Three Gorges and get another 22GW. :P

[thereismore]

5. Man's most ambitious project being thwarted by his own garbage. Very poetic. nt

[formercia]

6. There was enough manpower to put the garbage there.

I bet most of that garbage says 'Made in China.'

Oh, the Irony.

[LargeGreenSpider]

7. With every day that passes ...

the hominid bipeds get stupider.

[Nihil]

9. "Masses Dense Enough To Walk On"

and

"more than 3,000 tons of trash was being collected at the dam every day"

:wow:


Mind you, I had to laugh at the phrasing of this bit:

> and is in places so thick people can stand on it

The lack of punctuation and the word "that" made it read as a harsh but
perhaps necessary form of population control ...
:rofl: