Three Gorges Dam
Yesterday, 9 months ahead of schedule, was the completion day for the Yangtse River’s Three Gorges Dam in China. That was the biggest single construction project undertaken in the world, ever, and controversially involved relocating whole towns and flooding ancient monuments. On the plus side, it saves the thousands of deaths which used to occur every ten years or so when the yangtze river flooded, and produces enough electricity to save building about 40 nuclear power stations.
This post is really just an excuse to post a link to the set of photographs which I took in 2000, when the building of the Three Gorges Dam was already well under way.
Website: Images of China – Andy Roberts, 2000 ( temporarily offline )
Three Gorges Dam Enters Final Stages
Three Gorges Dam on wikipedia
Technorati Tags: yangtze, threegorgesdam
Andy Roberts is a writer who initiated DARnet. Contact me on aroberts@gmail.com or @aroberts on twitter
the building of this dam not only will/have displaced over a million people who are now/will be/is living in poverty. Not to mention all the new diseases and the threat toward the fishery industry. The over population of the cities during the night because of the workers, has caused dramastic rise in HIV and gonorrhea, only two diseases out of many that will/have occured.
I’m not convinced that it’s the building of a dam which causes poverty and overcrowding. The situation in China is that wealth is becoming more and more unevenly distributed with the headlong rush to a market economy in the main cities, while the basic needs of the rural populations are far from being met. The dam was intended to produce power and increased economic activity for the region all the way to Shanghai so it’s a disgrace that the ex-inhabitants of the banks of the yangtse haven’t been treated properly over their relocation.
Wow.. jocelyn , what did you have for breakfast?
I have never heard so much rubbish in my life, it was a poor area & may be the tour industry will give the people a better chance to earn more money?
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