Three Gorges dam forces water to fill with sewage, junk, chemicals -- Ascending Light

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Date Posted: 12:36:11 05/03/04 Mon
Author: Weird_Enigma
Author Host/IP: 172.156.5.204
Subject: Three Gorges dam forces water to fill with sewage, junk, chemicals

Yangtze's alarming future rises to surface

Three Gorges dam forces water to fill with sewage, junk, chemicals

TIM JOHNSON

Knight Ridder

WANZHOU, China - When this city decided to dam a tributary to the mighty Yangtze River, the city leaders searched for a suitable name for the beautiful artificial lake they said would form.

They settled on Goddess Lake.

They planned a tree-lined park along its shores, a tranquil respite from city life. Little boats would ply its waters.

Six months after Goddess Lake began filling up, it's become a cesspool filled with pig blood, dead fish, raw sewage, dye and runoff from tanneries.

"Can you see the sewage pipe dumping into the lake over there?" taxi driver Lu Yongheng asked. He pointed to effluent cascading into the lake, which is a few hundred yards from the Yangtze River.

Similar stories of environmental degradation are unfolding along the Yangtze upriver from the Three Gorges Dam. As the huge dam and smaller dams along the river's tributaries block the water, the flushing and self-cleaning action of the Yangtze River basin has slowed.

Reservoirs are becoming sewers, filled with trash and smelly water. Local officials refuse to shut down polluting factories, fearful that unemployment will rise. Edicts from Beijing on controlling industrial waste go unheeded.

Begun in 1994, nearly a mile across and 575 feet high, the controversial Three Gorges Dam is the biggest hydroelectric project in the world. The dam began blocking the Yangtze, the world's third-largest river, last June 1. By the time it's completed in 2009, the project will fill a reservoir that will stretch 350 miles upstream.

If all goes according to plan, the dam will supply a tenth of China's huge energy needs and limit catastrophic flooding of the Yangtze. It also will displace 1.3 million people.

The environmental deterioration that accompanies the $22 billion project shows how local authorities can thwart the toothless dictates of Beijing, and how zeal to sustain China's economic growth often trumps concerns about pollution.

The central government has ordered hundreds of factories along the river closed because they were heavy polluters, but local officials have balked.

In Wanzhou, home to a half-million people and the largest city along the Yangtze between the Three Gorges Dam at Yichang and Chongqing, municipal officials jettisoned plans for a lakeside park when it became apparent that local factories might have to spend lots of money on pollution control -- or else shut down.

Last month, the State Environmental Protection Administration declared that pollution treatment projects along the Yangtze were "not as smooth as planned," the China Daily newspaper said. Local officials declined to close 206 of 304 small and medium-sized factories, including paper mills and distilleries, that the central government targeted as major polluters, a report by the agency said.

In addition, 242 large factories, including steel and chemical plants, were told to improve their pollution control facilities. Of these, 227 haven't completed the work, it said.

Industrial plants up the Zhuxi River include a pig slaughterhouse, a fruit juice cannery, textile industries and a dye factory, residents said. Pipes pump sludge into the reservoir, which funnels into the Yangtze.

Goddess Lake formed near the confluence of the Zhuxi and Yangtze rivers.

"The water is getting more polluted," said He Jinjiang, a bystander at the lake. "You can't eat the fish. The fish meat is stinky."

To address worsening water pollution, China's government said last year that it was spending about $4.8 billion through 2009 to build 150 new wastewater treatment plants and 170 garbage disposal sites along the upper reaches of the Yangtze. Only 17 treatment plants have been built.

"The central government has spent quite a lot of money for these water treatment plants, but didn't give money for their operation," said Zheng Zegen, an environmental engineering professor at Chongqing's Architecture University. So municipal governments and larger factories must pay to operate the new plants.

"Some of my students went to these plants and saw with their own eyes that they were not operating," Zheng said.

Despite worsening problems with pollution, there's only one private environmental group in the upper Yangtze River region, the Green Volunteer League of Chongqing.

Its president, Wu Dengming, held up pictures showing waste near factories along the river.

"These photos show that the Yangtze River has turned into a garbage dump," he said, then added: "The common people, including officials, have no awareness of environmental protection. If economic activity causes environmental damage, they don't care. They just want to make money."

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