by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 29, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Lucy Hornby / Reuters
China’s Three Gorges Corp. on Thursday marked the beginning of construction for a dam that will flood the last free-flowing portion of the middle reaches of the Yangtze, the country’s longest river.
The 30 billion yuan ($4.75 billion) Xiaonanhai dam is decried by environmentalists because it will flood a nature reserve designed to protect about 40 species of river fish.
Completion of the dam would turn the middle section of the Yangtze into a series of reservoirs, leaving “no space for fish”, said environmentalist Ma Jun, who has been active for over two years in trying to prevent the dam.
“This is the last one, the last section in 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) along the Yangtze that was left for endangered or local fish species. This would be their last habitat,” Ma told Reuters.
A ceremony was held to commence early-stage preparation, including building a road and laying power lines and water pipes, said Zhu Guangming, news department director at Three Gorges Corp.
“Construction of the dam itself will begin only after we get final approval,” Zhu said, declining to give cost estimates.
“The government will give due consideration to all aspects including environment impact before issuing a permit.”
The Xiaonanhai dam would be the last in a series of 12 dams along the Yangtze, the rest of which are all completed or under construction.
The series will stretch inland from the Three Gorges Dam, which has created an inland reservoir more than 600 km long that has allowed the city of Chongqing to develop into an inland port. When completed, Xiaonanhai dam is designed to produce 1.76 gigawatts, a fraction of the 22.50 GW that the Three Gorges Dam will produce when it reaches full capacity.
AWAITING FINAL APPROVAL
The Chongqing municipal government is currently embroiled in a power struggle after the ambitious party secretary, Bo Xilai, was sacked earlier this month. The mega-city’s hard-charging police chief was also taken into custody by central authorities after spending a day in the nearest U.S. consulate.
Preliminary approval for the dam was issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top planning agency, which also has the authority to issue final approval.
The boundaries of the nature reserve were earlier re-drawn to allow the construction of the even larger Xiangjiaba and Xiluodu dams.
According to NGO International Rivers, which opposes the construction of large hydro dams and has been critical of China’s ambitious hydropower plans, the Xiangjiaba dam will be 6.4 GW and the Xiluodu dam 13.86 GW.
China wants to raise installed power capacity by 470 gigawatts (GW) to 1,437 GW by 2015 — the largest in the world. At least 110 gigawatts of the new capacity will be from hydro power — equivalent to five Three Gorges hydropower projects. Current hydropower capacity is 216 GW, also the world’s largest.
The Three Gorges Dam is the world’s biggest power project and was controversial well before it began construction in 1994.
Objections ranged from the destruction of rare species to the flooding of historic towns and displacement of millions of people, to concerns that it would quickly silt up and lose its efficiency in generating power.
It produces about 2 percent of China’s power.
Subsequent audits of the Three Gorges project showed that many of the flooded communities were never properly resettled while the steep banks of the reservoir have been plagued by dangerous landslides as the water undermines the hillsides.
In January, China’s environment ministry told hydropower developers they must “put ecology first” and pay strict attention to the impact of their projects on local rivers and communities.
From Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/29/us-china-dam-idUSBRE82S0GG20120329
Banner Photo by Dong Zhang on Unsplash
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 2, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Agence France-Presse
A major river in India’s northeast that originates in Tibet has suddenly dried up, triggering speculation that China might be responsible, a local official told AFP on Thursday.
The Brahmaputra has its source in China’s southwestern Tibet region where it is known as the Yarlung Tsangpo, and it enters India in the mountainous, remote northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, where it it is called the Siang.
The 1,800-mile (2,900 kilometre) river then descends into the plains of adjoining Assam state, where it is vital for agriculture, and ends in Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal.
“It was shocking to find the Siang river drying up and patches of sand visible on its bed in a very large stretch close to Pasighat town,” local state lawmaker Tako Dabi told AFP by telephone, referring to a town in East Siang district.
“We suspect the sudden drying up of the Siang could be a result of China either diverting the river water on their side or due to some artificial blockades somewhere in the upper reaches,” added Dabi, an advisor to the state’s chief minister.
He estimated the flow was about 40 percent of its normal strength.
Video footage from the scene shows the Siang — which is normally a gushing torrent several kilometres (miles) wide at Pasighat, according to Dabi — reduced to flowing in narrow channels in the large sandy riverbed.
“Locals are worried as the river is a source of livelihood,” Dabi added.
The problem with the river came on the day the Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jeichi held talks in New Delhi with his Indian counterpart S.M. Krishna.
India is extremely nervous about the danger of its giant northern neighbour diverting rivers that originate in Tibet and flow into India, or disrupting their flow with hydroelectric plants.
The two countries have held frequent talks about the issue at the highest level and Indian Premier Manmohanh Singh assured as recently as last August that there was no danger.
“We have been assured that nothing will be done which affects India’s interests adversely,” Singh told the upper house of parliament.
Energy-hungry and water-deficient China is building a hydroelectric plant on the Yarlung Tsangpo, but the Indian government says it has been assured this is a “run-of-the-river” project rather than a dam which would disrupt the flow.
Read more from Physorg: http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-river-china-dries-india-lawmaker.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 11, 2012 | Toxification
By AFP
It is the nation’s second water pollution scare in a month, after factories in the southern region of Guangxi contaminated water supplies for millions with toxic cadmium and other waste in January.
The ship, reportedly South Korean, was docked in Zhenjiang city on the Yangtze river last Thursday when it leaked phenol — an acid used in detergents — into the water because of a faulty valve, local authorities reported.
Residents started complaining their tap water had a strange smell on Friday, and soon rumours that a capsized ship was polluting the river sparked a run on bottled water in at least two cities in Jiangsu province, the Shanghai Daily said.
One photo carried by the official China Daily newspaper showed a supermarket shelf stripped nearly bare as a customer loaded water bottles into a shopping cart.
The water quality had now returned to normal, the government of Zhenjiang, in Jiangsu, said in a statement late Tuesday.
A resident in the city of three million told AFP the run on water appeared to have eased on Wednesday.
“There was panic buying of bottled water for a couple of days. But it stopped after we received a government notice clarifying that the tap water is safe now,” the resident, who declined to be named, told AFP.
Zhenjiang officials would not comment when contacted by AFP on Wednesday. The South Korean Consulate in Shanghai, meanwhile, said it was not aware of the incident.
Phenol — also called carbolic acid — can irritate the eyes and skin, damage the liver and kidneys, and impair the nervous system if absorbed, according to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The incident comes hot on the heels of the more serious environmental scandal in Guangxi, where a 300-kilometre (190-mile) section of the Longjiang River was polluted by toxic cadmium and other waste.
Read more at Physorg: http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-yangtze-river-pollution-panic-china.html
