China completes the 3 gorges dam

[hogwyld]

BEIJING - China finished building the Three Gorges dam across the Yangtze River on Saturday, a key milestone for the world's largest hydroelectric project. The 1.4-mile-long dam was designed to stop deadly floods that regularly ravage China's farming heartland, and eventually produce 22.4 million kilowatts of electricity -- enough to light up Shanghai on a peak day with power to spare.





http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060520/ap_on_re_as/china_three_gorges_3;_ylt=Ao5iPHljmCasJNhxdI51ojhPzWQA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Hooray for the progress of man and the conquering of nature!:sarcasm:

[panader0]

1. Maybe now the price of concrete will go down

[Wickerman]

4. and think of all the steel that went into it

rebar and such. Whole world economy might take an upswing.

[yellowcanine]

2. Meanwhile in the U.S. we are trying to get rid of dams to undo the

environmental damage they cause. Something is seriously screwed up.

[Psephos]

3. It's like a flashback to the USSR's man vs. nature engineering

Remember when they reversed the flow of that Siberian river? Russia to this day is a vast checkerboard of Superfund sites and ecodisasters spread across nine time zones.

This Chinese dam is an environmental catastrophe. On top of that, over a million people lost their homes and villages.

How 20th Century it all seems....

Peace.

[ConcernedCanuk]

7. As I've said before - reading the article helps

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You seem upset that over 1 million people were "relocated" as the article states - not "lost their homes and villages."

As has been done in flood plains in many countries for over a century, the government absorbs the costs, and assists in the moving process

A wee bit more from the Article:

Begun in 1993, the project steamed ahead with the backing of the communist leadership despite objections to its $22 billion cost and environmental and social impact, including the inundation of historical relics.

The dam will start protecting people from floods right away, Li said.

"Even if there is a major flood this summer, the Three Gorges Project is capable of regulating flooded waters in an effective way and preventing 15 million people on the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and their property from suffering damages," the official Xinhua News Agency quoted Li as saying.
______________________________________________________________________

the Three Gorges Project is capable of regulating flooded waters in an effective way and preventing 15 million people on the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and their property from suffering damages

Now THAT puts things in a whole new perspective,

NO?

[The2ndWheel]

9. So do these quotes

"Environmentalists and engineers have warned that the reservoir risks becoming polluted with waste from cities and towns upriver, many of which lack adequate sewage treatment."

"Plans for a more elaborate celebration were canceled, Xinhua reported, without giving a reason. Elaborate state celebrations have been rolled back amid a growing disparity between the urban rich and rural poor."

"Begun in 1993, the project steamed ahead with the backing of the communist leadership despite objections to its $22 billion cost and environmental and social impact, including the inundation of historical relics."

But hey, whatever the state wants, the state gets. It's there to protect us from ourselves.

[Psephos]

11. I did read the article. I've read elsewhere about Three Gorges, too

Call this a gentle disagreement. :-)

The lesson of massive engineering projects from the past - dams are a perfect example - is that unintended consequences are left for others to amend. Rivers exist in a state of dynamic equilibrium with their watersheds. We force a river to a single course and a single level and we end up with a New Orleans catastrophe-in-waiting. Meanwhile, depleted of the Mississippi's renewing muds, the delta lands and bayous south of New Orleans are receding rapidly and will soon be washed into the Gulf of Mexico.

The Everglades water containment schemes of the last century are now being reversed to try to restore some of the previous natural flow-through, at a cost of many billions. The Glades have suffered permanent damage in the meantime, and are a shadow of their former reach and condition.

Flood control is good, right? The Aswan Dam in Egypt has stopped the refertilization of the Nile watercourse by silt-laden flood waters. It's a nightmare for agriculture in a region that has precarious agriculture to start with. Lake Havasu in our own West is now a third filled with silt. There isn't a large dam you can name that doesn't have this problem.

Rivers move their courses, they swell and ebb, they change the land over which they wander, and the land and the river develop a dependence on each other. We interrupt that at great peril. Dams promote more and more people living on flood plains. A recipe for disaster, and a guarantee that in the future those who live next to rivers will consider it their "right" and the government's sober responsibility to make sure they are never discomfitted because of their shortsightedness.

The environmental impacts extend beyond the physical and geological. Sensitive species of animals (river dolphins, for one) are being hit hard by this dam. Migrating fish will no longer migrate. Water temperatures and pH will be different, pressuring native populations. Water speed through the river will be greatly reduced. Do you know that upstream of the dam, major cities dump as much as half of their sewage untreated into the river? At minimum, this unflushed biomass burden will suck the stilled river free of oxygen. There are, of course, worse effects from the flow of untreated sewage into a now-slow river.

You object to calling the flooding of traditional village lands, the water burial of historical and archaelogical sites, and the drowning of natural river valleys and habitats anything but the euphemism "relocation." If the "relocated" people's homes and villages are now under water, then how did they not lose them? I'm glad they got new ones, but if you read in other sources, you'll find that this was a nightmare for those affected.

There are benefits to the Three Gorges dam. I like that the power it produces means less coal burned in plants that would otherwise have to be built, for one. I'm not driven by ideology here, and don't condemn all natural engineering projects out of hand. But after several years of reading arguments both pro and con, I've decided that the evidence shows the problems the dam creates do not justify the benefits.

Dam-building has usually proceeded in the context of fictitious "public goods" asserted by businessmen (in capitalist countries) and politicians (in socialist countries), but the real goods are those realized by those in power, and not those who must live with the consequences. I see no departure from pattern here.

You might look up Hech Hechy Valley or Glen Canyon sometime for a diversion. Here's a good place to start:

The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0879059710/sr=8-1/qid=1148397629/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-4247228-4282534?%5Fencoding=UTF8

This is my opinion, nothing more, nothing less, nothing personal.

Peace.

[ConcernedCanuk]

12. They need electricity - this far more ecological than nuclear IMO

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It's the WASTE from nuclear that is the problem - we create a pollutant/toxin that will last MILLIONS of years

Solar takes a heck of a lot of $$ - and even the creation process of the panels is in some dispute as to their environmental effect - we haven't got to the disposal stage of those panels yet - we learn slow.

The Hoover Dam made a mess of many lands around the river, but California would not be the State it is today without it.

And so on

I do not disagree that their are negatives to interfering with momma nature's waterways

But since we depend on electricity

One must consider the benefits/disadvantages/costs of one system or another.

And once built, and the environment has adjusted(and it will) I believe hydro(water-generated) electricity is one of the most inert, environmentally friendly sources we know of that can supply the quantities we require.

[Xithras]

15. Inert? Hardly.

Dams change the temperature of the water, permanently destroying native fish stocks. That fact is largely irrelevant since they also block upstream migration for spawning. Those pesky floods replenish wetlands at the river delta, which will now begin to erode and vanish since both the seasonal high water flows and sediment are trapped by the dams. Bird habitat and wetlands along the river will rapidly vanish since the removed flooding threat will now open previously dangerous areas to farming and development.

If you want to know what dams do, visit the California Central Valley and stop by any one of our rivers. When John Muir and other early settlers visited them, the rivers were described as lush examples of natures bounty, with beavers, huge rabbit colonies, dense riparian forests, hundreds of miles of adjoining wetlands, and fish runs so dense that some claimed a person could walk across the river without getting wet...by stepping on the fish backs. In the late 1800's the rivers in the valley ran so high that steamboats regularly ran from San Francisco to cities like Modesto, Fresno, and many smaller farm burghs.

Today? Rivers like the Tuolumne are sterile because of the dams. So much water and soil are impounded that the spawning beds for the fish are gone. The riparian forests dried out and were cut down. There haven't been beavers here in a century, and the last Salmon run clocked a couple hundred...which really doesn't matter since there's a DAM between them and their traditional spawning area. And those steamboats? My property backs up to the Stanislaus river. During the summer, I can walk across the thing and not get my knees wet.

Ecosystems don't "adjust" when dams are built, they die.

[tabasco]

5. Hey it prevents floods!

I wonder if it will prevent earthquakes too. :shrug:

[legin]

6. I wish the effing media would stop doing these 'stupid facts'

i.e. "...enough to light up Shanghai on a peak day with power to spare..."

I've played SimCity, this ain't useful (probably on purpose).

Some facts I got:

britain power consumption equals roughly 100,000 MWatts (100 million kilowatts ??).

And I wish I knew China's.

Average power production by good sized power station equals about 1,000 Mwatts.

So this Dam project equals about 20 good sized power stations. (which ain't bad)

(I would check above facts)

[legin]

8. well I understand one reason why they use these 'stupid facts'

Too many different units of measurement

I got:

China power consumption, 2.17 trillion kWh (2004)

(correction I think) britain power consumption, 346.1 billion kWh (2003)

(from CIA factbook)

[David__77]

10. Congratulations to China!

This is tremendous mark of China's social progress. While US infrastructure crumbles, the stage is set for China to enter the ranks of moderately developed countries.

Third world people have little time for imperialist "ecology."

[cliss]

13. They might if they start losing large numbers of

their people. China is involved in a furious race to bring itself up to the 21st century. It's had a growth rate of about 9% for the past 20 years, which is unprecedented.

You can't have that kind of growth without some backlash. China has massive problems with pollution, poor environmental standards and few policies on the books. Their waterways are in serious trouble. If they keep this up, they're going to be doing like Mr. Putin last week, offering 'incentives' for people to have more babies. (Russia has one of the highest mortality rates due to pollution).

You're right, though, about "ecology". Organic produce and the environment are a sign of wealth: poor people rarely have the option for such "luxuries".

I'm sure glad we do.

[GodlessBiker]

16. Or imperialist just compensation for the land of the 1.3 million people ..

displaced by the building of this project, I would imagine.

[sam sarrha]

14. it will fill with silt and over flow ..they clear cut the the watershed

forests at the head waters and the river is just mud, that is the reason it has been flooding so bad lately and it will only get worse.. the silt is filling up the river beds which effectively lowers the banks...

besides the forest watershed and the grass land watershed has been destroyed, there is no hope for china now.. floods will continue, and water will dry up all over, there will contenue to be famine and when the chinese start flooding into India there will be Nuclear war. India has as many homeless as the population of the united states.. they wont tolerate china invading..

[jmm]

17. Locked

This thread isn't in compliance with the following latest breaking news rule-

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x87249

2. Do not post news that is more than 12 hours old.


This story is dated Sat May 20, 7:25 PM ET.

-jmm
LBN moderator