China’s Ministry of Water Resources and the National Development and Reform Commission announced on Sunday that the Three Gorges Project has been completed and accepted as a whole. It’s strange that the Three Gorges Project, which involves the construction of a number of reservoirs and power stations, was announced today, 26 years after it began, as having completed all construction tasks. When the Yangtze River flooded this summer, the Three Gorges reservoir area was flooded upstream in Chongqing and downstream in Wuhan, and the safety of the dam and its drainage function were once again widely questioned. The “project of the century” quietly “passed inspection and acceptance” with no leader in sight.
According to a report by the official Xinhua News Agency, the official acceptance conclusion is that the Three Gorges Project construction task is fully completed, the quality of the project to meet the specifications and design requirements, the overall excellent, continuous operation to maintain a good state, flood control, power generation, shipping, water resources utilization and other comprehensive benefits to play an all-round role.
In response to widespread questions about the Three Gorges’ water storage and drainage capacity, official media reports highlighted that this year’s flood season saw the largest flood flow of 75,000 cubic meters per second in the Three Gorges reservoir, which “turned the tide” and “built a ‘bronze wall’ with other reservoirs in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River”, and “greatly reduced the flood control capacity of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River”.
The official media described the Three Gorges reservoir as “iron wall”, apparently in response to the outside world, “Three Gorges Dam is deformed,” the Three Gorges Dam is strong, but specifically cited this summer’s Yangtze flooding example, seems to avoid some sharp targeting The Three Gorges reservoir area’s ability to discharge floodwaters is doubtful. At the end of June this year, the Yangtze River broke out into a huge flood, and the Three Gorges Dam released flood water, which put great pressure on Wuhan and other cities in the middle and lower reaches of the river. 2 July, the Yangtze River No.1 flood was formed in the upper reaches of the river, which increased the flow into Three Gorges Reservoir to 53,000 cubic meters per meter, although the Three Gorges Dam opened two flood holes on 29th to increase the downstream flow, and the water level in Three Gorges Reservoir broke the limit by nearly two meters again. On July 12, Poyang Lake District Red Alert was issued for Poyang Lake in Jiangxi Province, and Wuhan Guanyang Pavilion was flooded and only the top of the pavilion was exposed, and Hankou, Wuchang and Hanyang river banks were closed for management. Social networks are discussing whether the Three Gorges Dam has aggravated the flooding in the whole Yangtze River basin by releasing flood water in full force for several days.
The acceptance report specifically mentions the construction of the reservoir as a huge project to relocate residents and preserve historical relics. The construction of the Three Gorges Project forced a large number of local residents to relocate, displacing and housing more than 1.31 million urban and rural migrants, and led to the inundation of many historical sites and ancient cities, causing serious damage to the human environment, which some critics have called a “humanitarian disaster” or “environmental disaster”. “The super population migration project has also received to official completely positive evaluation, acceptance report said that the production of migrants significantly improved, “the geological environment of the migration relocation area is generally safe, and the ecological quality of the reservoir area is generally good.”
The report said the Three Gorges Power Station is the world’s largest hydroelectric power station in terms of total installed capacity, officially started construction in 1994, began to store water to generate electricity in 2003, all completed in 2009, as of the end of August this year, the Three Gorges project has generated a total of 135.41 billion kilowatt hours.
Controversies
The Three Gorges Project has been delayed until today to be fully accepted, but this “project of the century”, which was strongly pushed by former Premier Li Peng, has been opposed and controversial since it was proposed. The Three Gorges Dam: Once the Three Gorges Dam is completed and the water is stored, the water level in the Chongqing section of the Yangtze River will become very flat, and the sand and stones that are transported upstream near the Yangtze River will be deposited, blocking the port of Chongqing and cutting off the waterway, but also raising the water level when the floods come, thus flooding low-lying areas and endangering the safety of hundreds of thousands of people,” the consequences of which could be ten times worse than those in Shaanxi in late July 1983. The devastating flooding of the Ankang Han River”.
Controversies about the poor quality of the Three Gorges project due to technical limitations have been ongoing, eventually raising questions about whether this “millennium project” can withstand mega-floods for as many years as it takes, and the controversy over the distortion of the Three Gorges Dam that broke out in 2019 has reinforced this doubt. After several successive outbreaks of mega-floods that caused severe disasters in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, folk have also raised serious doubts about the original flood control and drainage function, which was the most important indicator of the Three Gorges reservoir’s construction.
On May 18, 2011, then Premier Wen Jiabao admitted that the Three Gorges project had urgent problems in terms of security and wealth, ecological and environmental protection, and geological disaster prevention and control, and that it had a negative impact on navigation, irrigation and water supply in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
The Three Gorges project was also plagued by problems of embezzlement and misappropriation of immigrants’ funds in 2004, and a 2007 report by China’s National Audit Office found that the project’s cost had increased by RMB 488 million due to a lack of strict management of settlements and contracts. In 2005, the Three Gorges Power Station and Three Gorges Underground Power Station were found to have been built without environmental protection procedures, and the Three Gorges Corporation was ordered to stop construction.
Wang Weiluo, a water resources expert from Germany, said in 2018 in “Why has the ‘overall completion and acceptance report of the Three Gorges Project’ been delayed?” In an article, it was noted that Wang Yang, currently a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC), then Vice-Premier of the State Council and head of the Overall Completion and Acceptance Committee of the Three Gorges Project under the State Council, chaired the first plenary meeting of the Overall Completion and Acceptance Committee of the Three Gorges Project in 2014, stating that the overall completion and acceptance of the Three Gorges Project was a great responsibility and “should be organized in the spirit of high responsibility to the country, the people, and history Carry out the completion inspection.” But until 2018, the acceptance committee chaired by Wang Yang had not produced an acceptance report. According to the author, Wang Yang was reluctant to sign the overall completion acceptance report of the Three Gorges project because Wang Yang, as Chongqing Party Secretary, understood that “the Three Gorges reservoir is a sloping lake with a hydraulic gradient, and this hydraulic gradient changes with the size of the Yangtze River’s water flow,” and that once the Three Gorges reservoir area suffered a major flood, Chongqing would risk being submerged by the danger. As a result, Wang Yang was hesitant to sign off on the overall completion report for the Three Gorges project. “For Wang Yang, the best way is to delay until things change.
The Three Gorges reservoir, known as the “project of the century”, is rarely seen in such exaggerated terms today. Observers signed “Financial Review” criticized the Three Gorges project as the “biggest political project” to start or cut off the flow of water, Jiang Zemin and Li Peng personally attended, but in 2006, the top of the dam did not see Hu Wen. “11 years after completion of the acceptance unit is just the Ministry of Water Resources, Development and Reform Commission, do not see practice Li and other national leaders to participate, everyone is when the dump!”
Who is the director of the overall completion and acceptance committee of the Three Gorges Project of the Yangtze River under the State Council? Not a single word of Wang Yang’s name was mentioned in the full acceptance report.
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