1.4 Reasons for a Dam at the Three Gorges
1.4.1 Flood Control and Drought Relief
Flood control in the Yangtze River (primarily in the middle and lower reaches) was the primary and most determinant reason advanced by the Chinese authorities as a rationale to push forward with the Three Gorges Dam construction (Huang, 2004). Huang et al. (2006) pointed that in order to have enough flood control capacity, the height of the Three Gorges Dam reservoir would have to be reduced to 145 meters before each flood season in order to make room (up to 22.1 billion cubic meters) in the reservoir for flood control purposes (CTGPC, 2006). Some 15 million people living in the flood prone areas such as Jianghan and Dongting Lake plains, along with their 1.5 million hectare of farmland will be directly protected, according to the Chinese government (Ponseti & Lopez-Pujol, 2006). In addition, the Chinese government also claims that roughly 80 million people and 6 million hectares of croplands, including the dense industrial network situated in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze are also likely to benefit from flood control managed by the TGP (Ponseti & Lopez-Pujol, 2006; Reynolds, 2011).
Given the long history of horrendous flood disasters in the Yangtze River basin, the Three Gorges Dam has been hailed as the panacea for flood control. Historical records indicate that China has suffered more than 200 devastating floods over 2000 years since 206 BC, once every ten years (CTGPC, 2002). The most disastrous flood during this period occurred in 1870, which killed about 240,000 people (Sutton, 2004). In the 20th century, four severe floods (1931, 1935, 1954 and 1998) brought huge property damage and extensive loss of life (CTGPC, 2002; People.com.cn, 2008).
In 1931, a huge flood struck an area of 130,000 square kilometers, the size of New York State, submerged 3.4 billion hectares of farmland, leaving 1.80 million houses inundated, 28.55 million people from 54 cities and countries affected, and 145,000 people killed (ibid). In addition to the lamentable loss of human life the flood of 1931 caused an economic loss of approximately 1.345 billion YinYuan (ibid).
In 1935, the next major flood hit an area of 89,000 square kilometers in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, with six provinces inundated: Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang (ibid). It is estimated that 10 million people were affected, 15,000 kilometers of cultivated land and 406 thousand houses were inundated, and 142,000 people killed, causing an economic loss of approximately 355,000 million YinYuan (ibid).
In 1949, the next major flood inundated 1.8 million hectares of farmland, affected 8.1 million people and cost the lives of 5699 people in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River (ibid).
In 1954, the flood in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River totally submerged 31.8 million hectares of farmland and 4.27 million houses, causing more than 33,000 deaths (ibid). The flood adversely affected 18.884 million people and 123 counties and cities (ibid). Moreover, the Beijing-Guangzhou Railway was suspended for more than 100 days (ibid). It is estimated that the 1954 flood caused more than US $1.5 billion in direct losses, and uncountable indirect ones (YWRP, 1999)[4]. The year 1954, was a time when China was still considerably underdeveloped. It is estimated that if there were a 1954-level flood today, given the present investment in agricultural and industrial capabilities, the estimated damages involved would exceed $20 billion (Ponseti & Lopezb-Pujol, 2006).
In 1998, The Yangtze Valley was subjected to major flooding at midstream and downstream communities. The country had been fighting against the flood for nearly 3 months, utilizing large quantities of flood materials and human/animal labor. More than 13 billion Chinese Yuan (RMB) (US $ 2 billion) worth of flood-fighting materials were dispatched from all around the country, and about 6.7 million people and hundreds of thousands of soldiers took part in fighting the flood (CTGPC, 2006). Despite this courageous national effort, the flood still caused great losses with 1320 people killed in the four provinces of Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi and Anhui, more than 5 million houses destroyed, 23.9 million hectares of farmland inundated, 231.6 million people were adversely affected, and the total economic cost of the 1998 flood for China was US $30 billion, without even taking into consideration indirect losses ((Ponseti & Lopezb-Pujol, 2006; CTGPC, 2006; People.com.cn, 2008).
Over the years, the Yangtze basin’s safety and flood prevention measures rely heavily on thousands of miles of dikes and embankments to resist minor to medium floods. Since the 1950s, more than 30,000 kilometers of dikes and embankments have been reinforced or raised due to the sedimentation accumulation, which leads to the lifting of the river bottom and makes the dikes subjected to the danger of being overrun (Jones & Freeman, 2001). In flood season, the water level could be raised up, as much as 6 to 17 meters higher than that of the plain region along both river banks (CTGPC, 2002; Jones & Freeman, 2001).
Dongting Lake is the main flood basin of the Yangtze River, serving as a reservoir to ‘capture’ the flood water of the Yangtze (Reynolds, 2011). However, Dongting Lake is also suffering from problems of sedimentation. The rising of the lake bed made the total area of the lake down from 6,000 square kilometers in 1925 to 1,649 square kilometers in 2010 (China Daily, 2011). This has greatly reduced the capability of the Jingjiang flood-diversion which is located on one of the tributaries of the Yangtze River. If the trend continues, Dongting Lake would be likely to vanish in the near future. One rationale for building the Three Gorges Dam is that it will control both the water and sediment buildup which reaches the Dongting Lake, thereby helping to retard the process of siltation (Jones & Freeman, 2001; Reynolds, 2011)
It has been alleged that over half (22.15 billion cubic meters) of the 39.3 billion cubic meters storage capacity of the Three Gorges Dam would be available for flood control (Xu, 2002). Accordingly, the flood control standard should in principle improve from one flood in 10 years to one in 100 years (ibid). As a result, 15 million people and 1.5 million hectares of farmland in the Jianghan Plain could in principle be relieved from the flood threats, along with the devastating plagues of massive death caused by big floods of the past that could otherwise have been avoided (ibid).
Now that the dam is completed, flood control is achieved by raising and lowering the water level in the reservoir behind the dam. The water in the reservoir will be discharged and the water level will be reduced to 145 meters as the flood season approaches (the end of May to the beginning of June) to make room for potential flood peaks (Reynolds, 2011). After that, the water level will be gradually raised back to 175 meters to satisfy the need of power generation (ibid). Regulating the water storage in the reservoir is not only used to guarantee power output but also used to increase the flow downstream during the dry season between January and May (ibid).
1.4.2 Energy Generation and Distribution
China believed that there is still huge potential capacity for power generation by exploiting many of China’s important rivers that flow out of the Tibetan high plateau that could be used as important hydroelectric sources, if developed, rather than just the Yangtze River. For there is only 26 percent of their hydropower generation potential that has to date been developed (Ponseti & Lopez-Pujol, 2006).
Same people argue that the Three Gorges Dam helps to release the pressure of China’s demand on world energy supplies which are becoming increasingly scarce on a global scale (Voser, 2012). Without the power generated from the TGD, China would have to extract even more than is available from coal reserves both at home and abroad, thus bringing about an accelerated depletion of already scarce resources. It is believed that the power energy from the TGP will ease the need of coal burning for electricity in northern China, according to a Three Gorges Dam fact website in 2006 (Ponseti & Lopez-Pujol, 2006; Reynolds, 2011).
According to the design plan, the annual power-generating capacity can reach an average of 84.7 billion kilowatts per hours from the Three Gorges Dam when each of the 26 turbo generators of 700,000 kilowatts each are all put into operation thereby achieving the designed installation capacity of 18.2 million kilowatts per hour (Power-technology.com). More than half of the power from the Three Gorges Dam will be supplied to central China, with an aim to providing a stable energy source (ibid). The power generated by the TGDP will be connected to the central power grid which covers the mid-China, East China, Sichuan and Chongqing and some parts of South China. The power-covered area includes 9 provinces: Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Sichuan, Guangdong, and two autonomous cities Shanghai and Chongqing (ibid)
Rising Energy Demand
The Yangtze River, as I mentioned earlier, has a total drop of 5,400 meters from West to East of China, containing huge potentials of hydropower resources (CTGPC, 2002). As the most populous and rapidly growing country in the world, China has suffered severe energy shortages over the past few decades due to widening gap between energy demand and supply (Garnaut et al., 2008). This interest has boomed energy industries and resulted in rapid energy growth in China over the last 20 years (Figure 1-16) (ibid). Its energy consumption has grown tremendously from 400 million tons of oil equivalents (Mtoe) in 1978 to 2252 Mtoe in 2009, to being the biggest in the world (IEA World Energy Outlook, 2010). It is estimated that the total of China’s energy demand is likely to rise to 3800 Mtoe by 2035 (IEA World Energy Outlook, 2011), consolidating its position as the world’s largest energy consumer.
Figure 1-16: Energy consumption in China, levels and growth, 1978–2006
Source: National Bureau of Statistics, 2007a. 2007 China Statistical Yearbook, China Statistics Press, Beijing.
The electricity produced by the Three Gorges Dam is considered particularly significant given that China is endeavoring to develop the western poorer regions of the country. It is believed that much of the hydroelectric power from Three Gorges Power Plants can help to alleviate some of the reliance on coal-burning plants, which consists of a lion’s share of China’s energy production. However, the hazard caused by the coal burning plants has been worsening in recent years. Coal consumption accounts for nearly 70 percent of China’s energy consumption (NBS, 2006). China’s traditional dependence on burning fossil fuels, especially coal, continues to pose a significant threat to the air and environment. Statistics reveal that 95 percent of sulfur dioxide and 60 percent of smoke and flying dust emissions in China are caused by the coal burning (Shi, 2008). The emission of harmful air pollutants from the coal burning plants, specifically carbon dioxide (CO2) is a major contributor to the greenhouse gas and global warming (ibid).
Just more than a decade ago, hydropower accounted for only 6 percent of the power supply. Official estimates indicate that the total economically exploitable potential at 290 Gigawatts (GW) (IEA World Energy Outlook, 2000). We have seen earlier in the chapter that the Three Gorges Dam will substantially benefit China’s economic development. Energy is critical to economic development, given that China is endeavoring to keep its annual economic growth rate at least 10 percent, we also observed that the potential provision for massive energy resources for production have strongly driven the decision to construct the Three Gorges Dam. The Three Gorges Dam has now supplanted the need of energy with an 18.2 million Kilowatts output, producing allegedly roughly 10 percent of China’s total available energy (Power-technology.com). Compared to the output of conventional coal-burning power plants, the Three Gorges Dam displaces about 45-50 million tons of coal combustion annually, according to Xinhua News Agency’s interview with Xie Xiufa, a senior engineer of the Three Gorges Bureau, under the auspices of the Yangtze River Water Resources Committee (Xinhua News Agency, 2007a). And increased power generation is considered vital to the continued growth China has experienced over the last decade. The Three Gorges Dam is expected to serve the goal of booming China’s economic growth like no other single dam has in history.
1.4.3 Navigation
We earlier observed that another significant reason given for building the Three Gorges Dam was to ensure that its huge reservoir can be used to improve navigation upstream on the river by raising the river’s level between Chongqing, and the city of Yichang, which is located downstream from the dam. It is worth mentioning that the Yangtze River is called the ‘Golden Waterway’, a name that highlights its importance as a transport backbone between East and West. As previously mentioned, it carries 80 percent of China’s internal waterborne traffic (CTGPC, 2002). It provides the main alternative form of transportation to the otherwise inconvenient and previous transportation efforts to Sichuan province. Navigation of the waterways in the Three Gorges region has always been difficult, because “the sandbars and the shallowness and instability of the river courses have put many risks to the shipping” (Ponseti & Lopez-Pujol, 2006, p.167). The Yangtze River is not suitable for navigation for the most part of the year, because of major treacherous shoals and fast-moving rapids (Ponseti & Lopez-Pujol, 2006). In old days before engines were introduced into the Three Gorges, when the river was low, the upstream of the Yangtze trip was only possible with the service of dozen trackers who used ropes to pull heavy cargos up the river, walking along narrow paths which were carved into the cliffs, secured only by chains, or they walked along the shoreline at the risk of their lives (Chetham, 2002). Motorized boats have eventually made the trip easier, but it still takes skillful hands to take the passengers safely to their destination due to the changing contours of the river bottom by avalanches (ibid).
It is clear that the Three Gorges Dam has improved the navigation along the river’s 660 kilometers waterway from the southwest metropolis Chongqing to Yichang by making the river deeper and by expanding its width. According to Ponseti and Lopez-Pujol (2006, p.167) “the deepening and widening of the river channel” will inundate “dangerous shoals” and reduce their flow velocity thus removing the “numerous one way control sections”, thereby achieving a result which was part of the rationale for the dam. This is due to the ability of the larger river to permit huge commercial vessels of up to 10,000 tons to travel a direct route downstream from the Pacific Ocean into the interior of China, as far as to the harbors of Chongqing with a population of 30 million for half the year and 5,000 tons vessels during the rest of the drier six months (Ponseti & Lopez-Pujol, 2006). These improvements increase the annual one-way passing capacity to Chongqing from the present 10 million tons to 50 million annually by 2015, and transportation costs have been decreased by about 35-37 percent (CTGPC, 2002; Ponseti & Lopez-Pujol, 2006; Gleick, 2008; Reynolds, 2011).
Navigability is of paramount importance for commerce, as much larger vessels will be able to ship goods much quiker through the river, and to do so, from the inland to the coast. It is claimed that this newly-found shipping access has increased trade and has served to provide a much-needed economic boost for the whole Three Gorges area. During a period of 8 years of operation from June 2003 to June of 2011, the five-step ship lock of the Three Gorges Project had handled a cumulatively total of 400 million tons of cargos (Xinhua, 2011). According to the Chinese Daily online, in 2004 there was a total of 8719 times sluicegate operation, 1.72 million passengers flow and goods transport of 34.30 million tons which passed through the gate (People.com.cn, 2005).
In addition, with the regulation of the reservoir, the minimum discharge downstream of Yichang in the draught season has been now increased from 3,000 to more than 5,000 cubic meters per second, which also improves the navigation condition in the middle and lower reaches of the River during the dry season (Hartman & Becker, 2003). Because the dam is able, during dry seasons, to release water from the reservoir to the middle reaches of the Yangtze, the Three Gorges Project has also increased navigation along the mid-stream Jingjiang section of the river (CTGPC, 2002).
1.4.4 Water Accessibility and Drought Alleviation
A fourth benefit of the dam complex has been the increased availability and access to potable drinking and agricultural water. The Yangtze, which is 6,300 kilometers long, usually experiences a dry season between November and April. This is often followed by spring flooding. Cargo ships are often stranded in the sections around Yichang, Wuhan and Jingzhou of Hubei Province, and Jiujiang, Hukou of the neighboring Jiangxi Province, thus often previously blocking the route (Ponseti & Lopez-Pujol,2006). The TGDP has abated the effect of drought by controlling the water discharge to maintain normal shipping along the China’s longest river. From 2006 to 2010, cumulatively, the Three Gorges Reservoir supplied more than 27 billion cubic meters of water to the lower reaches of the Yangtze (UN-Water, 2011).
Unlike the South of China, where floods are the biggest threat to the livelihoods and environment, northern China’s climactic nemesis is drought. The TGDP is no proved itself to be the centerpiece of “a vast plan designed to create a balance between areas of water abundance and water deficit, greatly improving the environment for hundreds of millions of people” (Jones & Freeman, 2001, p.21). The enormous Yangtze Basin is believed to provide not only a greater supply of water to the lower reaches of the Yangtze, but it also supplies much needed water to areas of the dry Northern China Plain, an area encompassing six provinces and the Beijing and Tianjin metropolitan areas. The North of the country, with a similar land area and population to the South, occupies only 18 percent of the total water resources in China (Wang et al., 2008). To cope with this looming water shortage and continuing increase in demand, a US$75 billion South-to-North Water Diversion Project is now under construction, a plan to divert water from the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze to the parched North (Ponseti & Lopez-Pujol, 2006; Li, 2010; Reynolds, 2011).
1.4.5 Direct Reduction of Air Pollutants and Greenhouse Gas Emission
The purported ecological benefits of Three Gorges Dam have been based largely on its potential role in substituting hydraulic power for coal power generation. Despite its multifarious dam sites throughout the country, China still depends, as we have observed, mainly on coal burning plants for power generation. It is estimated that in the year 2000, 70 percent of China’s energy consumption came from coal consumption (IEA World Energy Outlook, 2000). It is now widely accepted that harmful air pollutants from coal burning such as CO2 are the major contributors to the greenhouse gas and global warming. On the assumption that the hydroelectric power source of the Three Gorges Dam will compensate for and thus save about 45-50 million tons of coal combustion annually, the reduction of the greenhouse gas emissions promises to be enormous (CTGPC, 2002).
Energy sources such as electricity generated by hydraulic movement are generally considered as a recyclable energy form and accordingly reduce the emission of greenhouse gas. In this sense, the Three Gorges Dam is applauded as playing an important role in reducing contaminating emissions such as Green House Gas (GHG) and other major air pollutants (CTGPC, 2002). By lowering China’s reliance on fossil fuel and in turn reducing fossil fuel fired generation, which is equal to 50 million tons of coal yearly (Lu, 1996), the Three Gorges Dam allegedly significantly reduces environmental air pollution. It also means that the average annual discharge of pollutants in the late 90’s, amounting to 120 million tons of carbon dioxide, 1.5 million tons of sulfur dioxide, 10,000 tons of carbon monoxide, and 370,000 tons of nitrogen oxide, as well as large amount of smoke and dust has been reduced (CTGPC, 2002; Xinhua News Agency, 2007; Acker, 2009). [5]
1..4.6 Three Gorges Dam Benefits Tourism in China
The Three Gorges area has long been one of China’s famous tourist attractions. Since the Three Gorges Dam is one of the largest engineering projects in the history of the world, it is not surprising that it has drawn a significant number of tourists to the area, with many subsequent economic benefits. In addition, the increased navigability in the Three Gorges region also helps to the increased number of visitors by water. Chinese authorities claim that the reservoir filling which now forms a calm lake sits among the steep gorges and will not significantly alter the spectacular scenery of the Three Gorges. On the contrary, with the rising of the water levels, “the chance to visit new scenic spots upstream of some tributaries, previously inaccessible” has now become available (Ponseti & Lopez-Pujol, 2006, p.168). For example, the White Emperor City, a famous tourist destination in the Three Gorges region, which was hidden in the thick forest before the TGP reservoir impoundment, becomes a beautiful island standing in the center of the river (Travelchinaguide.com).
Before embarking on a more critical exposition of the TGDP, I have endeavored in the final section of chapter 1 to provide as positive an account of this massive dam project as possible. This being so, it will be easier to weigh fairly the costs of environmental degradation and human suffering caused by the dislocation of more than a million people.