Giant dam could cause geological disasters - China
Date: 12-Sep-02
Country: CHINA
The government had set aside four billion yuan ($480 million) to prevent landslides and other disasters at almost 2,500 dangerous sites identified around the reservoir, the official Xinhua news agency quoted a top official as saying.
The area around the dam on the Yangtze River would be "prone to geological disasters after the project is completed in 2009", Xinhua quoted Shou Jiahua, vice minister of land and resources, as saying.
"The increase of water level is likely to break the original geological stability," he said.
The 185-metre (607-foot) dam, the largest water control project in the world, has been plagued by reports of shoddy construction, rampant corruption and criticism from environmental experts and human rights groups.
A senior Chinese official said earlier this year that cracks had appeared in the dam, which requires the relocation of 1.13 million people to make way for the lake.
Some 646,000 of those had already been removed from the reservoir basin, which would be closed off in June 2003, the China Daily quoted Guo Shuyan, director of the cabinet's Three Gorges Construction Committee, as saying.
Guo said the dam, now 70 percent complete, had stood up well to swollen waters on the Yangtze after torrential rains over the summer.
"The dam's design is absolutely safe and, when it is completed, it will be able to control floods effectively," he said.
"Having been severely tested by floods this summer, the completed sections of the dam have reassured people."
China says the dam, begun in 1993 and expected to cost 200 billion yuan ($25 billion), is needed to contain the Yangtze's devastating annual floods and to meet future power demand.
Critics say the project, first planned decades ago, is not a practical solution to either problem and could cause severe pollution and silting by slowing the river's flow.