 |
From break of day
Till sunset glow
I toil.
I dig my well,
I plow my field,
And earn my food
And drink..
|
What care I
Who rules the land
If I
Am left in peace?
- UNKNOWN POET, 2300 B.C.
|
The Yangtze River probably looked about
the same then as it does now. But not for much longer if the
rulers of the land carry out what they are determined to do to
this river. Build a dam one mile across, inundate four hundred
miles of the river in the world's longest reservoir. Move people
(one million two hundred thousand of them) out of the impoundment
area to somewhere else. And subject an estimated one hundred
million souls to drowning when the dam fails, as dams do.
If it holds, as dams don't, the river
will fill it with sediment when ever it is ready to, and the
reservoir will be superseded with about one hundred million acre-feet
of that sediment . There are geological concerns about the formation
it is anchored in and concerns about the quality of the engineering
based on rampant corruption in public works projects. At the
head of the reservoir, if it is built, the sediment will accumulate
six hundred feet higher than the reservoir would be, and that
aggradation of sediment would continue as far upstream as it
can reach at the rate of a foot and a half per mile, carrying
out a rule that rivers accepted eons ago. That added load can
extend a hundred or two miles upstream, or more if the present
river grade permit it.
And that might require moving another
million people our of the new impoundment adding more to the
a billion already are feeling the need for a lot more open space
and for finding food for more people.
Of course, the new dam can provide hydroelectric
power. It will be the worlds largest hydro-power facility generating
17,500 megawatts of power, permitting the Chinese to have better
blackouts than they have ever experienced, cause massive damage
to the river's ecosystem, and move people into areas for which
they had developed no immunity. If the dam failed, China could
worry less about overpopulation. They might have to contend with
the homelessness we acquired through inadequate planning.
Our own Bureau of Reclamation has helped
plan for the Yangtze River's proposed Three Gorges Dam and work
is underway. I asked Michael Strauss, former Reclamation Commission,
what the dam would inundate. "Nothing by a mess of mountains,"
he said. Look again.
If the Chinese were to learn an obvious
lesson from our hope to drain the fluctuating Lake Powell, we
can cheer. And if we can learn to use energy as efficiently as
they do, they could cheer.
David
R. Brower
[ Photograph Courtesy;The
Nature Conservancy: c. Dennis Cox] [Take
Action!]
