InfrastructureChina admits to critical flaws at world’s largest dam

Last week, the Chinese government made a rare announcement and publicly admitted that there were critical problems at the Three Gorges dam, the world’s largest hydroelectric dam, lending support to the growing opposition to future dam projects.

With the approval of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, the country’s second in command, last Thursday the State Council announced that the Three Gorges dam had been plagued by a series of problems “urgently in need of resolution.”

These problems include ecological deterioration, geological disasters, and the lingering uncertain status of more than one million people displaced by the dam.

While critics have assailed the dam for years, this is the first time such a high-ranking government official has publicly acknowledged the dam’s problems.

Beginning in 1992, when the Three Gorges dam was initially submitted for approval, the project immediately encountered opposition. At the time, critics worried about the potential social, environmental, and geological risks of building a 600 feet tall dam.

Despite these concerns, the dam’s proponents eventually succeeded by arguing that the project would help control flooding on the Yangtze River and generate large quantities of renewable power for an energy hungry nation.

The dam has succeeded in generating energy, producing an estimated 84 billion kilowatt hours in 2010 alone, however the dam’s critics have been proven right based on its social and environmental impacts.

The hydroelectric facility has resulted in a deluge of problems including algae blooms caused by water pollution, enormous heaps of floating trash, and cracks in the earth in nearby fields.

Dai Qing, a long-time environmentalist who opposes the dam, said, “Now that the problems can no longer be covered up, I think Wen is seizing the opportunity to bring them more into public view.”

According to Dai, Premier Wen, a trained geologist, has long opposed the project and repeatedly urged the State Council to address the dam’s environmental problems.

In particular, the dam has been unable to control flooding and the extreme drought plaguing China has galvanized the opposition and is likely responsible for the government’s most recent statement.

China is currently struggling to cope with the largest drought to hit the country in more than fifty years. A severe lack of rain has drained nearly 1,400 reservoirs in Hubei, endangered wheat crops and cattle herds, and limited hydroelectric output as river levels fall. Water levels along the Yangtze have fallen so low that portions of it have been closed to shipping traffic.

To help stem the dam’s environmental impacts, the government pledged to limit water pollution, improve the lives of those relocated by the project, and to generate a disaster prevention plan.

While encouraged by the government’s newfound candidness about the dam’s problems, environmentalists are still skeptical about efforts to improve existing problems.

“It’s already too late to solve a lot of the problems,” Dai said.

Wang Yongchen, a prominent environmentalists, echoed Dai’s sentiments, stating, “Those problems, you can’t do anything about them. You can’t blow up the dam, can you?”

Yet Wang remained more optimistic about the ability for the government to tackle smaller problems like water pollution and the loss of wetlands.

In addition, Wang believes that the government’s acknowledgment of the dam’s problems will make it “easier for us to push for change.”

Some environmentalists believe that the announcement could be a signal of Premier Wen’s opposition to future dam projects.

China is already by far the world’s producer of hydroelectric power and the country plans to generate an additional 140 gigawatts of energy with planned hydroelectric projects over the next five years.

Peter Bosshard, the policy director at International Rivers, a California-based environmental advocacy group, said, in a blog post, “By recalling the unresolved legacy of the Three Gorges Dam, he may be sending a shot across the bow of the zealous dam builders which would be only too happy to forget about the lessons of past projects.”