The Three Gorges Dam Corporation celebrated their completion of the world’s largest hydropower project by announcing that over 100 engineering innovations had been created during the course of construction. And they boasted breaking several world records to get the dam built, such as the record for the amount of concrete poured at any one time. Engineers clearly learned something from building the Three Gorges Dam, but what about the rest of us? What have environmentalists, geologists, social scientists, biologists, and others learned from the Three Gorges Dam? This was the topic of a two day symposium that I attended this past weekend, hosted by the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Design at UC Berkeley, and Probe International.

Robert Goodland, former World Bank environmental advisor and Dai Qing, Probe Internationall

The inspiration for the symposium came when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao issued a statement in May of 2011 admitting the Three Gorges Dam has had its share of problems, both foreseen and unforeseen. This official expression of concern seemed to open the doors wider for public debate on the project.  Symposium organizers did an incredible job gathering a broad lineup of Chinese experts, who perhaps because of the May declaration as well as the “neutral” setting of UC Berkeley, were willing to take part in an a rare interdisciplinary discussion on what the world’s largest hydropower project has taught China, and the world.

Yet many of the government-funded scientists from China presented a view of the project as one that, while not without its faults, had largely contributed to the good of the Chinese people. Weng Lida of the Yangtze Valley Water Resources Protection Bureau gave the dam high marks for its flood control benefits, though he admitted the dam “weakened the gorge feeling” and that “the main structure is finished but many other aspects are not finished yet, including many things proposed in the Environmental Impact Statement.” The representative of the Yangtze River Fisheries Research Institute, Chen Daqing, declined to pin the severe demise of Yangtze fisheries to Three Gorges Dam itself, instead citing overfishing, water quality decline, and many other dam projects as equal contributors.

One of the strongest criticisms of the project was made by Ren Xinghui of the Beijing-based think tank the Transition Institute, who presented a disheartening story of his repeated attempts to use China’s new information disclosure laws to reveal details of Three Gorges Dam project funding. Later in the symposium, laughter and consternation alike filled the hall when the nature of the Three Gorges Dam funding was compared to the US government bailout of private banks.

What have we learned from the Three Gorges Dam? Data presented at the symposium points to several lessons:

• Project costs were far higher than anticipated.
• Landslides in the reservoir area and reservoir-induced earthquakes have been greater in number and more severe than anticipated.
• The number of resettled people was far higher than anticipated (nearly double, and growing!)
• The negative impacts of resettlement on people (such as their ability to resume former livelihoods) were greater than anticipated.
• Water quality in the reservoir was worse than anticipated.
• The impacts on fisheries, hydrology, and sediment (and probably many other issues) can probably only be adequately understood through river-basin wide impact assessments, which were never completed, and are not being undertaken now.
• Lack of consensus on primary project purpose (hydropower versus flood control) may have limited the dam’s ability to fill either function very well.

Those who continue to build mega-dams around the world may want to take note not only of the world record innovations, but also the world record headaches caused by the dam.

But could another Three Gorges Dam ever be built? I don’t think so. In a presentation on the human costs of the project, Chen Guojie, Institute of Mountain Disaster and the Environment, pointed out that the Chinese government had clearly decided early on that “the value of one million people [was] lower than the value of the Three Gorges Project.” But China is a different country than it was in 1992, when the Three Gorges Dam was approved. And though bad dams continue to be built in China and around the world, the days of forced relocation on the scale of the Three Gorges Dam are hopefully over for good.

The city of Dalian, in Liaoning Province, China sits on a peninsula that juts into Bohai, a bay that made news two summers in a row for oil spills caused by offshore drilling. I spent four days here together with staff of Blue Dalian, a grassroots environmental organization that seeks to protect Dalian’s regional water resources – including the Bay of Bohai and the Biliu River, which provides drinking water for Dalian City. Pacific Environment has supported Blue Dalian since it started, in 2007, with funding, mentorship, collaborative campaigning, and training.

Harvesting Seaweed in Dalian

On my trip, we spent two days in a rental car following the Biliu River up to its headwaters in the neighboring municipality of Wangfu Zhen. For two years, Blue Dalian has been raising the alarm about uncontrolled gold mining in the upper Biliu Watershed.  The miners here use cyanide and other toxic chemicals to leach gold of out rock drilled from the hills surrounding the Biliu River. Gold leaching ponds are often located right next to the river, each containing thousands of tons of toxic mud. An earthquake, severe rain, or other accident could easily compromise retaining walls, spill the toxic sludge into the Biliu River, and poison downstream water sources including the reservoir that Dalian residents drink from.  Such accidents have occurred all over the world, including the recent Cadmium spill in Guangxi, China.

Blue Dalian’s initial strategy included investigating the problem and reporting their results. Last year, they produced Poisoned River: Gold Mining along the Biliu River and distributed this report to officials, community groups, and schools. The Dalian Municipal government has been slow to respond; one environmental official showed concern early in the campaign but was later transferred to another position.  Media has been sympathetic, but without evidence of existing harm being done, they have hinted the story won’t become marketable until an accident actually occurs. Local farmers have felt some impacts, such as livestock falling ill and orchards that no longer bear fruit. But they are worried about confronting the mining companies, most of which are controlled by powerful local government officials and have deep connections in their communities.

Sludge tailings on Biliu River

On my visit to the area, I was surprised to learn that Dalian and Bohai are also home to the Hong Yan Nuclear Power Plant, the world’s largest nuclear power plant, with six reactors currently and two more coming soon. Following the earthquake and tsunami in Japan last year, fears of a nuclear accident in China led government planners to suspend plants under construction and temporarily close others to undergo safety system reviews. Responding to increased local concern about the Hong Yan, Blue Dalian printed and distributed a citizen’s guide to nuclear safety.

Besides the dangers posed by a potential nuclear accident, the reactor cooling mechanism increases the temperature of the surrounding sea water by 6 degrees, which melts the ice shelves that provide breeding grounds to China’s only seal species, the spotted seal. Other seashore projects such as a trans-provincial coastal highway, offshore drilling, and poaching of seals for zoos and for “seal penis medicine” have reduced the local breeding population to about 1000 seals.

On a tour of the Dalian peninsula and Biliu River, we stopped at a dump on Bohai Bay which services the “Opening Up Zone” of Dalian City. A hotspot for birdwatching, we also hoped we might spot a spotted seal in the wild. No such luck; but in addition to several kinds of gulls and ducks, we caught sight of a white-tailed eagle resting on a distant slice of sea ice.

Garbage dumped into the Biliu River

Last year, Blue Dalian teamed up with ten other local and national organizations and successfully convinced planners to re-route the trans-provincial coastal highway around sensitive breeding habitat. But the species is still in peril, and this year, Blue Dalian and Pacific Environment will investigate potential new risks to the boundaries of the spotted seal nature reserve. We will promote policies that ensure that future development projects cannot so easily bypass nature reserve boundary protections.

The past few months have been busy for the budding environmental organization Green Stone. First, they stopped a plan to cut down 1,000 trees for a new subway line in the city of Nanjing, in Jiangsu Province. Next, they exposed a case of persistent, carcinogenic water pollution in one of Apple’s printed circuit board supply chains in the city of Kunshan (see Apple Report). The day before I arrived for a three day visit last month, one of Nanjing’s largest corporations called the Green Stone office, asking what they could do to improve their pollution record. Meanwhile, the Provincial Environmental Protection Bureau has asked Green Stone to be patient as they work to address the hundreds of pollution information disclosures requested by the group. “I think they are kind of afraid of us,” Green Stone’s Director Li Chunhua laughed.

The key to Green Stone’s recent success is not necessarily experience (their staff of three are all in their mid-twenties) but courage, charisma and recruiting. On a windy Sunday morning, we met staff and a group of 25 water monitoring volunteers by the edge of the Qinhuai River, the main river that bisects Nanjing City.  Most of the volunteers were under thirty years of age, including a few new freshmen from nearby universities. Everyone’s spirits were high as we embarked on one of Green Stone’s bi-monthly “river walks,” to collect water quality samples using donated equipment, and to survey visitors to the river. Most were male retirees, folks who have been coming to the river in their leisure hour for decades. “The river stinks when it’s not flowing,” one of our survey participants observed. “It needs to flow. When it doesn’t move the pollution gets worse.”

The Qinhuai River flows into the much larger Yangtze, the source of Nanjing’s water supply. The Qinhuai used to be much more polluted, at least on the surface. In the past decade, Nanjing has spent hundreds of millions of US dollars to clean up the river. Upstream farms were shut down due to their use of agricultural chemicals, and wastewater infrastructure has been improved. During our river walk we observed garbage patrol boats with long-handled scoops picking up every visible scrap of trash.

But with water pollution, there is often more than what meets the eye. As we conducted our basic water quality tests, a volunteer from Nanjing University held a tiny bottle filled with pink water up to a laminated chart, to “read” the levels of dissolved oxygen in the sample. “It looks like a four,” he said, indicating a significantly depressed level of dissolved oxygen. Since there is little farming left on the Qinhuai, the problem is likely being caused by untreated urban sewage and runoff.

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This summer, Pacific Environment had the joy of hosting Zhou Xiang for a few days in the San Francisco Bay area.  Zhou Xiang, Executive Director of Pacific Environment’s partner group Green Anhui, is an inspiring leader in the new generation of environmentalists in China.

Touring the Berkeley recycling plant

Having grown up in a coal mining region in Anhui Province, he was influenced at an early age by environmental issues in his hometown.  He studied chemical engineering in college, but then made a 180 degree turn.  At his talk at the Asia Foundation on August 22^nd, Zhou Xiang remarked “I studied chemistry in college, and probably would have worked for the chemical industry. But then I met Wen Bo from Pacific Environment and instead, I started Green Anhui.”

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In June, Pacific Environment was lucky to host visiting scholar Chen Yongsong, from the Chinese non-profit organization Yunnan Econetwork. Born in the tropical rainforests at the southern tip of China, Yongsong is a seasoned environmental advocate who has worked as a consultant to the Chinese government on a range of environmental issues. For example, he helped develop and ground truth the first government-led sustainable development plan for Yunnan Province, working with communities on a huge range of pilot projects in forestry, agriculture, and environmental management.

Our San Francisco staff and other colleagues gathered to hear Yongsong’s insights into Chinese environmental politics. From a foreign perspective, the space for environmental advocacy in China can be seen as quite narrow, and it was refreshing to learn from Yongsong that the space for doing effective grassroots environmental work in China is much larger than we may think.

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One Oscar apparently isn’t enough for filmmakers Ruby Yang and Thomas Lennon.   Once again, the dedicated environmental documentarians have been nominated in the category of Best Documentary Short, this time for The Warriors of Qiugang.  The poignant film chronicles a small group of Chinese villagers’ 5-year battle to bring an end to lethal water pollution caused by three factories that had come to dominate their tiny hamlet.

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Wetlands are an incredible environmental resource, providing critical habitat for countless animals and plant species, and natural water filtration and storage.  Wetlands help regulate water tables during floods and storm surges, and also serve an important carbon storage function. It is alarming, then, that our wetlands are degrading faster than any other ecosystem type, primarily due to climate change and development.

In honor of World Wetlands Day today, we at Pacific Environment would like to highlight some of the great work being done by our partners in wetlands around the Pacific Rim.  In particular, we would like to acknowledge the work of Dauria and the Rivers without Boundaries Coalition to assist WWF-Amur and the Daursky Biosphere Reserve in their efforts to protect the Ramsar wetlands within the transboundary Amur River basin in eastern Russia at the China-Russia border.  We would also like to acknowledge our partners in China, the China Mangrove Conservation Network, for their work on protecting ancient Looking-glass mangroves.

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Program Director at Wuhu Ecology Center

In China, the paper industry is considered highly polluting and energy intensive. Its COD emissions are ranked first among all industries. Anhui, in Eastern China, has a high concentration of paper companies, and the Wuhu Ecology Center focuses on the pollution problems associated with them. In the process of collecting information regarding papermaking companies in Anhui, Shandong Chenming Paper Group’s repeated violations of environmental regulations came to our attention. Within the paper industry, Chenming Paper Group is one of the biggest publicly traded companies. It has integrated pulp and paper-making production and is quickly becoming one of top 500 companies in China and one of the top 50 in the world. Chenming’s product is sold globally, including to the United States. (more…)

In a post here from last summer, Xiu Min Li, Pacific Environment China Program Director, covered an investigation by Chinese environmental groups into heavy metal pollution caused by manufacturers who supply parts to Apple Corporation.  4,000 Chinese suffered from lead poisoning in 2009, prompting the Alliance to investigate and embark on a letter-writing campaign to the companies who contract with those manufacturers.  Apple did not respond until it received nearly a thousand letters from American consumers, weeks after other companies that were investigated had all already responded to Alliance inquiries.  Late might be better than never, but it didn’t save Apple from a scathing review.

Last week, The Green Choice Alliance released a report called “The Other Side of Apple” in which they ranked the computer tech giant last among 29 multi-technology companies’ for response to public inquiry and investigation regarding pollution and working conditions at factories in their supply line.  The Alliance, a coalition of 36 Chinese environmental NGOs, is lead by The Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), a Pacific Environment partner.

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In China, it is true that one should be cautious of drinking tap water to avoid an upset stomach. However, one must not forget that the impacts of water pollution do spread beyond drinking water. Irrigation water used for agriculture in China may not be that clean either.

It is often the case that irrigation water is often pumped directly from any nearby water source, regardless of its purity. The water sources used for irrigation are often contaminated by heavy metals or other chemicals discharged by industrial activities.  In recent years, farmers have moved away from using organic agriculture practices to using more industrial farming techniques in order to save time and gain larger profits. This means that water sources in China are also plagued by agriculture pesticides. To add more fuel to the fire,  how can we expect Chinese farmers to find the extra money to filter their irrigation water if they already have trouble getting their own drinking water treated?

The impacts of unclean irrigation water can be traced all the way down the supply chain to China’s street markets where fresh produce are bought and sold. This raises a very important issue – and that is of food safety and food security.

I recently visited China on behalf of Pacific Environment’s China program. As a Chinese American visiting China, the first thing I wanted to do after checking in to my hotel was to find the nearest market or fruit stand so that I could satiate my hunger with healthy bite to eat.  Visiting the street market in Jilin was a nostalgic moment for me as the experience seemed so authentic and down to earth. It brought back memories of my childhood in China.

At first, it was natural for me not to question the safety of the food I bought, because I was carried away by the market’s atmosphere and I was busy reliving my childhood memory of China. Food safety was something I never used to think about. But returning back to the realization that I am visiting China for work related to water pollution, I did wonder about the chemicals and pesticides that may have been infused to nurture the tree that produced the fruit.  I thought to myself, are there any regulations on the produce sold in these markets and should there be? Or should I not be concerned and just deal with it like the local and enjoy myself?

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