Three Gorges Dam

For mil­lions of peo­ple liv­ing near or down­stream of the sea­son­al Yangtze Riv­er, flood­ing has always been an issue. Not only are many big cities locat­ed along the riv­er, but also exten­sive farm­land and indus­tri­al areas. The con­se­quences brought by future floods could be unimag­in­able and uncontrollable.

To solve the issue, a hydro­elec­tric grav­i­ty dam project was pro­posed to alle­vi­ate the prob­lem, span­ning the Yangtze Riv­er by the town of San­doup­ing, in Yil­ing Dis­trict, Yichang, Hubei Province, cen­tral Chi­na, down­stream of the Three Gorges. The main body’s con­struc­tion was com­plet­ed in 2006, reduc­ing the flood­ing from once every ten years to once every 100 years. Besides, with the pow­er plant ful­ly func­tion­ing in 2012, the Three Gorge Dam became the world’s largest pow­er sta­tion for installed capac­i­ty, gen­er­at­ing about 95 TWh of elec­tric­i­ty annually. 

How­ev­er, the suc­cess of the dam comes with social and envi­ron­men­tal costs. More peo­ple were relo­cat­ed, and relo­ca­tion costs were rough­ly the same as the con­struc­tion. Fur­ther, the absence of silt down­stream will make the river­bank and sed­i­men­ta­ry plain more vul­ner­a­ble to upcom­ing floods. The defor­esta­tion need­ed for the dam’s con­struc­tion result­ed in many endan­gered species going extinct. Sta­tis­tics for the dam’s impacts are out­dat­ed, with the most recent analy­sis com­plet­ed around 15 years ago. The dam’s long-last­ing impact on the envi­ron­ment is unknown. 

CEE sub­jects: Hydraulics and Hydro­log­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, Envi­ron­men­tal Flu­id Dynamics

• How did dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers come to a con­sen­sus on this project? How did the res­i­dents and the gov­ern­ment col­lab­o­rate with each other?
• What is the poten­tial impact of the project (envi­ron­men­tal and social) oth­er than men­tioned above? How are we going to deal with these problems?
• How could we use today’s sus­tain­able prac­tices to revi­tal­ize area’s impact­ed by the dam and/or reeval­u­ate how future dam projects can be bet­ter designed?
• Was the project worth the cost? To put it in anoth­er per­spec­tive, is it “right” in your sense? (could be viewed from both con­se­quen­tial­ism and deon­tol­ogy aspects)

• Peer reviewed articles 
  • Three-Gorges Dam–Experiment in Habi­tat Fragmentation?
• Pop­u­lar media/news references 
  • Three Gorges Dam Hydro Elec­tric Pow­er Plant, China
  • Envi­ron­men­tal con­tro­ver­sy over the Three Gorges Dam
  • Tam­ing the Yangtze
• Books/memoirs 
  • The Riv­er Drag­on Has Come!: Three Gorges Dam and the Fate of Chi­na’s Yangtze
  • Before the Deluge