Dam of Dreams

The Three Gorges Project, China’s most ambitious engineering undertaking since the Great Wall, has replaced Brazil’s Taipu Dam as the world’s largest hydroelectric and flood control installation, Chinese officials said, with the strength to hold back more water than Lake Superior and power 26 generators to churn out 85 billion kilowat-hours of electricity a year when the final touches are completed in 2008. Hoover Dam, by comparison, generates more than 4 billion kilowatt-hours a year.

‘‘This is the grandest project the Chinese people have undertaken in thousands of years,’’ said Li Yong’An, general manager of the government’s Three Gorges Co., which runs the project under the direct leadership of Premier Wen Jiabao. In its scope and ambition—as well as its determination to push forward despite the human costs—the Three Gorges Project has become a symbol of China’s relentless energy and determination to take its place among the world’s great economic powers.

China has long dreamed of a dam across the Yangtze to alleviate flooding and facilitate navigation. Sun Yat-Sen, revered as the founder of the Chinese republic, urged construction of a dam as early as 1918. US engineers suggested one right after World War II. Mao Zedong, whose Communist Party took over in 1949, wrote seven years later that ‘‘walls of stone’’ should rise from the river. It was left to the present-day Communist leadership, dominated by engineers, to put the project into motion.

Li Peng, a former waterworks official, got the project off the ground in the late 1980s when he was premier. The first earth was turned in 1993 under the president at the time, Jiang Zemin, a Soviet-educated engineer. The dam’s completion is now being celebrated under President Hu Jintao, who was trained as a hydraulic engineer and has adopted ‘‘scientific development’’ as a mantra.

But critics of the project—they are many, in China and abroad—have questioned whether building a giant dam is really scientific in the 21st century, when the US and other nations are weighing the wisdom of damming their rivers. Despite the $24 billion price tag, they note, the Three Gorges Dam will produce only 2 percent of China’s electricity by 2010.

Moreover, environmentalists have warned the backup of water behind the dam could end up as a giant waste-collection pool for Chongqing, China’s largest urban conglomeration about 250 miles upstream. ‘‘There are two sides to everything, and the Three Gorges Project is no exception,’’ said Cao Guangjing, the building company’s deputy manager. ‘‘But many studies, undertaken since the beginning, have shown that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.’’

The government has set aside $5 billion to build sewage treatment plants around Chongqing and other upstream cities to prevent the river from turning into a cesspool, officials pointed out. Tests so far show water quality has not suffered, even though water has been backing up for several years, they said. ‘‘Look at that,’’ Feng Zhengpeng, head of hydroelectrics, told reporters walking atop the dam as he gestured toward the river far below. ‘‘Do you think my water looks dirty?’’

Li Yong’An, the dam-building company’s manager said The project solves ‘‘one of the Chinese people’s most important afflictions,’’ the flooding that has ravaged the Yangtze basin for centuries. Floods killed more than 145,000 in 1931, according to Chinese records, and another 142,000 four years later. As late as 1998, with the dam under construction, 1,300 were reported killed by river waters that spilled over the banks. Now, said deputy director Cao, engineers will be able to control the flow of water during the peak flooding months of summer, letting it back up in a huge basin that will reach up to 385 miles upstream.

But to make way for the impounded water, which now has risen to more than 400 feet above its natural level, at least 1,200 villages and two towns had to be moved. Displaced residents already total about 1.1 million people, according to a government count. Wen, who heads the government’s Committee for Construction of the Three Gorges Project, last week authorised a further rise to 470 ft next fall, which will displace another 80,000.

(Edward Cody)