The Three Gorges Dam Project

Introduction

The Three Gorges Dam project considered to be the largest dam ever taken under development. The idea of the dam has been around since the early 1900s, but due to numerous circumstances had only begun development in mid-1990s. The massive project has displaced millions of people, changed the landscape along the Yangtze River and is definitely a record setting project is multiple categories.

Summary

The original idea of the Three Gorges Dam project was in the year 1919 and credited to Sun Yat-sen (Wenjie, 2009). The government in China began preliminary plans for a dam at the Three Gorges in 1932, but was derailed during Second Sino-Japanese War. Even in 1939 while Japanese military forces occupied Yichang, they surveyed the area a designed plans to build a dam in anticipation of a Japanese victory over China. Even during World War II the chief design engineer of the United States Bureau of Reclamation surveyed the area and developed plans for the dam and 54 Chinese engineers went to the U.S. for training (Wikipedia, 2013). Yet, even with a few other plans put together, it wasn't until 1992 when the National People's Congress of China approved the dam project.

With the dam project being the largest ever attempted, its impact on the people that lived along the Yangtze River has set records for the number of people displaced. More than 1.2 million people have had to be relocated due to cities and towns that were flooded by the newly created reservoir. In total, 13 cities, 140 towns and 1,350 villages along the river have been flooded (Bosshard, n.d.). While the costs of relocating this massive amount of people has exceeded US$8.5 billion, the power production of the dam is expected to recoup these costs plus construction and financing costs within ten years.

In addition to the displacement of people, the ecological and environmental impact of the dam has been one of great concern. More than 360 species of fish exist in the river ecosystem around the dam, of these twenty-seven percent are endangered. With the impact the dam has on water flow and temperature as well as the turbine blades of the hydroelectric plant, all are expected to affect the ecosystem negatively. As with the displacement of people, the now flooded areas along the river contain several endangered plant species that may disappear forever. One flooded area in particular is a wetland where a large number of endangered Siberian Crane spend their winters. All of these ecological and environmental costs have definitely had environmentalists trying to take action, but with the dam being functional complete, there is not much hope of the situation improving.

While there are numerous negative aspects of the development of the dam, power generating capacity and the added ability to control downstream flooding are some of the good the dam brings. With the completion of the dam and its hydroelectric plant, the facility is considered the largest capacity plant in existence. The power generation reduces coal use with has a positive impact of greatly reduced greenhouse gas emissions. When the plant was planned, it was expected to meet the needs of ten-percent of China's power needs, but with the rapid growth and accompanying power consumption, in 2011 the dam only provided about 1.7% of that demand (Wikipedia, 2013). While power generation is a driving force in what is paying for the dam, the original function