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As China's mega dam rises, so do strains and fear
2007-11-14
The slopes of Chenjialing Village have shuddered and groaned lately, cracking and warping homes and fields, and making residents fear the banks of China's swelling Three Gorges Dam may hold deadly perils. Muzi.com News 10054146-0 (muzi.com)The vast hydro scheme is meant to subdue the Yangtze River, but as the water levels rise, parts of its shores have strained and cracked, dismaying scientists and officials and alarming villages such as Chenjialing in Badong County. Muzi.com News 10054146-1 (muzi.com) Xiang Chuncai, who has lived much of her 84 years on this hillside of orange groves above the Yangtze, recalled waking in fright last year to rattling windows and rumbling noises from the earth. The tremors returned several times in past months, residents of this village in Hubei province said. Muzi.com News 10054146-2 (muzi.com) "It's all been splitting since the Three Gorges Dam was filled," Xiang said, poking a wide crack snaking up a wall in her earth-brick home. "We don't have the money to move ... I'm scared what will happen if we stay," Xiang added. Muzi.com News 10054146-3 (muzi.com) Along the 660-km (410-mile) reservoir, residents pointed to erosion, slides and deformed terrain they said have seriously worsened since last year, when the water level was raised a second time. Muzi.com News 10054146-4 (muzi.com) While authorities have vowed to contain geological aftershocks from the dam, poor farmers worry about being swallowed up by landslides. The resulting tensions threaten to rekindle the bitter clashes that long dogged the project. Muzi.com News 10054146-5 (muzi.com) "Sometimes the ground rumbles and shakes, dogs bark, babies cry. It frightens us too," said Xiang's neighbor, Su Gongxiang, showing his front door that will no longer shut. Muzi.com News 10054146-6 (muzi.com) MASTERING NATURE Muzi.com News 10054146-7 (muzi.com) These days, China stands almost alone among nations in wielding the wealth and will to conjure up vast engineering efforts to alter the flow of rivers and lives of millions. Muzi.com News 10054146-8 (muzi.com) The Three Gorges Dam is the world's biggest, an engineering feat that seeks to tame the world's third longest river while displacing 1.4 million people. Muzi.com News 10054146-9 (muzi.com) The 6,300-km (3,910-mile) Yangtze, which rises on the Tibetan plateau, flows through the towering Three Gorges to irrigate, and often flood, much of the country's central and eastern plains. Muzi.com News 10054146-10 (muzi.com) From 1919 a succession of leaders argued that a dam would end devastating floods and generate power. That dream eluded the revolutionary founder Mao Zedong, whose plans for a dam foundered in political turmoil and poverty. Muzi.com News 10054146-11 (muzi.com) But in the 1980s, a new generation of Communist Party leaders championed the plan as a trophy of growing economic power. Muzi.com News 10054146-12 (muzi.com) They faced down opposition from environmental critics and skeptical scientists who in 1992 persuaded an unprecedented third of the usually docile Party-controlled parliament either to oppose the plan or abstain from voting. Muzi.com News 10054146-13 (muzi.com) Construction began in 1994. Muzi.com News 10054146-14 (muzi.com) Since the 2,309-metre-long dam was finished in 2003, the reservoir has been filled with water in stages. If all goes to plan, it will reach its maximum capacity of 39.3 billion cubic meters of water by the end of 2008, capping a year of national glory centered on the Beijing Olympics. Muzi.com News 10054146-15 (muzi.com) "NEVER LIKE THIS BEFORE" Muzi.com News 10054146-16 (muzi.com) But in Chenjialing this engineering triumph has brought bewilderment and the resigned anger that comes easily to people with little say over their own lives. Muzi.com News 10054146-17 (muzi.com) Its 1,400 villagers live above what was once a rivulet that could be waded across. These days it is a deep inlet that can moor big coal boats plying the Yangtze. Muzi.com News 10054146-18 (muzi.com) Everywhere among the fruit groves and potato fields is evidence of a bruised and unsettled landscape. Muzi.com News 10054146-19 (muzi.com) A hulking old tree has begun to tilt riverward, a nearby earth terrace suddenly subsided, and many houses show cracks and warping, all since last year, villagers said. Muzi.com News 10054146-20 (muzi.com) "We worry about staying but can't move," said Su Zhonghen, washing clothes in an outdoor stone sink that now skews to one side. "Only families with flooded homes get compensation." Muzi.com News 10054146-21 (muzi.com) A nearby bank of the Yangtze collapsed last year, tossing several homes into the water, and the county government has put signs around Chenjialing warning of "geological hazards." Muzi.com News 10054146-22 (muzi.com) The coal mine at the foot of the village probably does not help, with its dynamite blasts regularly shaking the quiet air. Muzi.com News 10054146-23 (muzi.com) Residents said they had been visited by a handful of worried but lowly officials who said there was little else they could do. Muzi.com News 10054146-24 (muzi.com) Tan Lianyong, a wiry 45-year-old farmer who also works in the mine, said he worried that land slips could trap him in a tunnel. Muzi.com News 10054146-25 (muzi.com) "We're just peasants. We've got to earn money to survive. We can't choose how," he said, eyeing the vegetable patch in front of his home that suddenly sank in the middle. Muzi.com News 10054146-26 (muzi.com) PULVERISED HOUSES Muzi.com News 10054146-27 (muzi.com) The dam region is granite-solid in parts but also spans brittle terrain. Scientists have long forecast greater instability as rising and falling dam waters punch at shorelines, block seepage, and squeeze weak spots. Muzi.com News 10054146-28 (muzi.com) "The dam area was always prone to landslides, and now the raising of water levels is adding to the pressure on the sides," said Lei Hengshun, an environment expert at Chongqing University. Muzi.com News 10054146-29 (muzi.com) The raised water loosened vulnerable layers of earth and rock, and drought and torrential rain could intensify risks of major land collapses, he said. Muzi.com News 10054146-30 (muzi.com) The pulverized slope of Qianjiangping Village in Zigui County, Hubei, suggest the dangers these shocks may bring. Muzi.com News 10054146-31 (muzi.com) In July 2003, after the dam began to fill, a landslide there killed 24 people and left 1,100 homeless, churning a whole hillside into a jumble of rock and earth and shattered homes. Muzi.com News 10054146-32 (muzi.com) State media said at the time the dam was not to blame, and torrential rain had at least played a part, experts said. Muzi.com News 10054146-33 (muzi.com) But villagers nearby said they feared that as waters rose again, landslide monitors would be unable to give enough warning. Muzi.com News 10054146-34 (muzi.com) "The first sign will be cracks in the older homes, like ours," said a former resident of Qianjiangping, Wang Aihua, visiting his parents there. "Keep your eyes open for anything like that," he sternly told them. Muzi.com News 10054146-35 (muzi.com) In the rainy summer of 2007, landslides across the dam area killed at least 13 people, according to local news reports and the dam environmental agency. Muzi.com News 10054146-36 (muzi.com) A Xinhua news agency report last year cited over 1,900 geological hazards around the dam, including 362 urgently needing safety work. Thirteen had received it. Muzi.com News 10054146-37 (muzi.com) Scientists in state institutes have suggested that officials did too little to anticipate the dangers. Muzi.com News 10054146-38 (muzi.com) "The scale and intensity of these problems seems to have exceeded predictions," said Liu Changming, a hydro-engineer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences with long involvement in the dam. Muzi.com News 10054146-39 (muzi.com)
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