[SampanViking]

Big Celebrations are taking place in Yichang, Hubei Province, China to mark the succesful conclusion of the main Dam Building phase of the Three Gorges Project, which is the worlds largest Dam.

With this in place the orders have been given to raise the level of the Dam towards its final 175M level.

This is a major event for China, over the next 2 years the Hydro Power Plant will be built, Sea Going Cargo Ships will be able to penetrate the Yangtze as far as Chongqing and maybe even Chengdu in Sichuan Province, major work on the key Water Deversion Projects from the Yangtze to the Yellow Basins will begin in earnest and; perhapse most importantly, the process of development of China's central interior can begin in a meaningful way.

Central to this is Sichuan Province itself, a Poverty stricken state, the size of Texas, with a population in excess of 120 Million. The succesful development of this region will create a vibrant economic belt along the entire Yangtze Valley Region and by this create something unique in Human Geography.

I am curious to learn how Peak Oil forumers feel about projects and development goals like these?

[dissident]

While it is tragic that a significant part of the one million people displaced by this project were ripped off by corrupt officials, I think that this project is a good thing for China in the long run. The benefits of controlling flooding and hydroelectric generation of electricity are quite clear. The whinging in the western media about this project is typical hypocritical propaganda. The only difference compared to Canada's and USA's mega hydro projects is that they happened to be in sparsely or even un-populated parts in the case of the latter. So no eggs had to be broken to make the omlette, so to speak.

[SampanViking]

Not surprisingly I find myself in greater agreement with dissident rather than Pstarr.

I can however correct a couple of miss-assumptions.

1) The Yangtze does not need severe seasonal flooding as a highly effective irrigation system has been in place for nearly 2000 years. All the floods do is kill and destroy.

2) The Dam lake is highly unlikely to become a pleasure pond due to the high volume of Large Commercial Frieght and Passenger Ships which will be using it. Unlike Canada and USA, China is not a "hollow" country, sparsely populated in the centre and populations concentrated in the coasts. China's heart is heavily populated and this project's benefits are primarily geared towards them and not Shanghai.

It is estimated that the electrical output of the Dam will save the need to burn 50 Million Tons of Coal per annum.

[perdition79]

From a peak oil standpoint, the Chinese have just eased into the gas pedal, accelerating us that much quicker toward petrocollapse. That dam is going to spur economic growth along the Yangtze, which will industrialize the agricultural provinces along the way. Then all those new industrial regions will start sucking up dinosaur juice, further increasing the global demand for the Good Stuff[sup]®[/sup]

[aldente]

When one flies around on Google Earth it becomes clear that the zenit of building dams in the US was 1960. Every possible river or creek that could be stopped was stopped (impossible in this day and age). So the Chinese simply catch up and are in the 1960's pattern of economic high flight, just as all of Europe and North America was as a natural result of WW2 (well, that connection is somewhat loose, ok, ..)
These are nothing than mere patterns in my view. No force can stop the Chinese and supposedly even Napoleon back in the day warned not to wake this sleeping dragon.

[skiwi]

[quote="SampanVikingI am curious to learn how Peak Oil forumers feel about projects and development goals like these?[/quote]

Hers's hoping a good earthquake teaches those mother fcukers a lesson

[J-Rod]

here's some more interesting tidbits:

"The Yangtze used to be so clear, I could drop a pen and see it float to the bottom, but now it's a dirty muddy river, and the water is no longer good for drinking," says Dai.

The towns that were flooded over during the building of the dam were never cleaned of toxic waste, he says.

"There was never a budget for clean-up. On the bottom of the reservoir, there is now hospital, factory, pig and animal waste. It will all be stirred up."

Perhaps the biggest headache for the government has been resettling the 1.9 million people whose homes are now underwater. More than 1,000 towns and villages are expected to disappear.

Many villagers were forced to give up land they've farmed for generations, some of China's most fertile. Today, they sit in concrete homes with no furniture, no jobs, and little to do.

The government promises that relocated people will be given money, new homes and jobs, and that billions are being spent on sewage treatment facilities.

Dai says corrupt officials have stolen much of the compensation that was supposed to go to the dislocated.

When many of these communities heard that foreign journalists were coming to inspect the dam, many unfurled banners demanding the government punish "corrupt officials", and "Give us back our space for survival." But the banners were quickly torn down, and the police jailed the activists.

Because leaders view the Three Gorges project as an important symbol of China's new status as a world economic power, Dai believes the government is quick to silence any dissent on the matter.

Several Chinese journalists have been jailed for writing articles criticizing its building.

"The dam for the government shows the world that the Chinese are mighty, we have the world's largest dam," says Dai.

In reality, the dam will now only provide about 2 percent of China's electricity by 2010. And the significance of using dams for energy is being debated by the United States along with several European nations. The argument always goes back to the environmental harm such projects create.

linky

[TheTurtle]

Hers's hoping a good earthquake teaches those mother fcukers a lesson

The people downriver from the Three Gorges wake up each morning to the light of a new day. They eat if they are hungry, they drink if they are thirsty. At night they lay their tired bodies down to sleep and dream of better lives for their children whom they love.

Do you you really hope for them all to be drowned in a chaotic swirl of tons of water just because China's ruling elite has hopped on the Consumerist Band Wagon and joined the desparate rush for ever more energy?

[Tyler_JC]

-Turtle

I agree. It is extremely cruel and spiteful to hope that the dam fails.

The dam will damage the local environment and in the long run will be a burden.

But in the short term it will spur economic growth, hastening the depletion of natural resources (read: OIL).

Projects like the Three Gorges Dam are a natural outgrowth of the HUGE savings build-up of China. They have lots of Ameircan Dollars and they need somewhere to park that cash.

Why not invest in their own infrastructure?

For the Chinese government, this is a win-win. For some of the businessmen in China, this dam will create more profits. Some people may get new jobs because of this project.

It's only a problem for...everyone else.

[dissident]

What a load of anti-Chinese bile. I guess all you dam haters want the Canadian James Bay project dismantled as well as the Hoover dam, etc. The dam is justified by flood control alone. Maybe thousands of years ago there was enough forest cover to control runoff and flooding of the Yangtze, but all those Three Gorges farms have messed that up since a long time. So now these farms are underwater, well that's just too bad.

[grabby]

So the Chinese simply catch up and are in the 1960's pattern of economic high flight, ...No force can stop the Chinese and supposedly even Napoleon back in the day warned not to wake this sleeping dragon.

Tell me when they start wearing bell bottoms and tie-die. I'd like to by stock.
Also, when is their Vietnam coming?
Oh thats right, they are working on that as we speak.

I can't wait for the area the size of texas with 120 million people willl wake up and start buying cars to drive to work, that'll rally help the world economy, I'm sure.

[Tanada]

Sorry David, but the operative word there is "prepare" which is exactly what we will not do. There will be "adaptation" we can at least agree upon that.

I agree. I don't think there will be any kind of widespread forthright dealing with the effects of global climate change except to regret the poor people who are suffering and dying because of it. Tsk tsk, those poor poor people. I wish I were more optimistic.

I watched An Inconvenient Truth last night. Twice.
If V.P. Gore is correct and the Himilayan glaciers are about to go the way of the Brontosaurus there are going to be a heck of a lot of thirsty people in the Indian sub-continent and in the PRC.

Maybe that is the real reason for the three gorges hydro project?

[Ludi]

Maybe that is the real reason for the three gorges hydro project?

Yeah, screwing up an enormous watershed is about the way you'd expect us to deal with this kind of situation, if we deal with it at all.
"What's the most lame-brained expensive thing we can do, that won't actually help at all but will make some folks super rich in the short term?"

[jbeckton]

China is also pumping billions of dollars into renewable energy. Everything from solar, to wind power, to biomass. By 2020 China wants 15%of its power to come from renewable sources. Most of that will come from one source, hydro-power.

The five great rivers of Asia all rise in China; the Yellow river, the Yangtze, the Mekong, the Salween and the great Brahmaputra. China wants to dam them all.

The bike used to be king on all Beijing streets
On the middle reaches of the Yangtze work is nearing completion on the biggest of them all, the Three Gorges Dam. When it's finished in three years time the world's biggest turbines deep inside the world's biggest dam will pump out 25 gigawatts of electricity. That's equivalent to one-third of the UK's total energy output.

But that's only the start. Plans have just been approved to build another mega dam, higher up the river, across the Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the most beautiful and spectacular river gorges in the world. Further west close to the Burma border plans to build a series of dams across the Salween (Nu Jiang) have recently been given the green light. Environmental groups are purple with rage.

But the simple fact is that China will need all of these projects simply to keep up with its breakneck economic growth.

I was under the impression that China was also putting a lot of effort into building nuclear plants? I will have to check into that.

[Aaron]

China is also pumping billions of dollars into renewable energy. Everything from solar, to wind power, to biomass. By 2020 China wants 15%of its power to come from renewable sources. Most of that will come from one source, hydro-power.

The five great rivers of Asia all rise in China; the Yellow river, the Yangtze, the Mekong, the Salween and the great Brahmaputra. China wants to dam them all.

The bike used to be king on all Beijing streets
On the middle reaches of the Yangtze work is nearing completion on the biggest of them all, the Three Gorges Dam. When it's finished in three years time the world's biggest turbines deep inside the world's biggest dam will pump out 25 gigawatts of electricity. That's equivalent to one-third of the UK's total energy output.

But that's only the start. Plans have just been approved to build another mega dam, higher up the river, across the Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the most beautiful and spectacular river gorges in the world. Further west close to the Burma border plans to build a series of dams across the Salween (Nu Jiang) have recently been given the green light. Environmental groups are purple with rage.

But the simple fact is that China will need all of these projects simply to keep up with its breakneck economic growth.

I was under the impression that China was also putting a lot of effort into building nuclear plants? I will have to check into that.

China is also building or has already built 500 new coal-fired power gen plants.

And not the good, clean kind... but the smoke just goes drifting away unfiltered kind.

[dorlomin]

Guardian

But documents on the website of a government agency suggest a 38 gigawatt hydropower plant is under consideration that would be more than half as big again as the Three Gorges dam, with a capacity nearly half as large as the UK's national grid.
"This dam could save 200m tonnes of carbon each year. We should not waste the opportunity of the biggest carbon emission reduction project. For the sake of the entire world, all the water resources than can be developed should be developed." That CO2 saving would be over a third of the UK's entire emissions.

All lovely and cudley so far but.....

China's construction of dams also raises the prospect of a race with India to develop hydropower along south Asia's most important river. "India needs to be more aggressive in pushing ahead hydro projects (on the Brahmaputra)," Jairam Ramesh, the Indian environment minister, told the Guardian during a recent visit to Beijing. "That would put us in better negotiating position (with China).

To minimise the risk of water-related conflict, the two nations have agreed to share information about hydro-plans on the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra.

Indian media have raised concerns that Beijing may ultimately embark on a gigantic diversion scheme that would channel water away from India to the dry northern plains of China, but such fears are dismissed by Tsering, who says the dam at Metog would be for hydropower, not water diversion. "The laws of physics will not allow water diversion from the Great Bend."

It gives China a phenominal lever of power over its great regional rival.

[Tanada]

Does it state anywhere in the article how much total flow of the river will be reduced into India once the reservoir is filled to capacity? If the res is big enough that a lot of water will evaporate from its surface then the consequences to India could be severe.

[Pretorian]

Does it state anywhere in the article how much total flow of the river will be reduced into India once the reservoir is filled to capacity? If the res is big enough that a lot of water will evaporate from its surface then the consequences to India could be severe.

well with India's breeding levels dont you think something should be done about it? This damb should help in the long run.

[ian807]

Frankly, this is as nutty as the original three gorges project. There's nothing that dam accomplishes that couldn't have been accomplished with a few hundred smaller dams up and down the rivers engineered in such a way (side ponds) as to not destroy the river ecology.

As an engineering solution, it's a disaster. A a public relations project, a public works project and a regional political power consolidation project it makes sense. It only fails to solve real world problems.

[Ache]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html

NOW THEY TELL US: China’s ruling State Council has just issued a statement acknowledging serious flaws in the colossal Three Gorges Dam across the Yangtze River. Though the project has generated much-needed electric power and helped control floods, the statement said, “there are urgent problems that need to be addressed, such as stabilizing and improving living conditions for relocated people, protecting the environment and preventing geological disasters.” Even this relatively candid language was a euphemistic summary of the chronic deadly landslides, contaminated water and social dislocation brought on by the dam. Indeed, as the State Council spoke, shipping downriver from the dam is all but paralyzed by drought, which might not have happened if the Yangtze had been free to flow as in the past.

...