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 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.

(more…)

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.”

(more…)

Posted by Shannon Kellman

Our friends on the blogosphere have been pretty busy.

Big news out of Sacramento.  The Governor is trying to find a new way to solve California’s worsening water crisis.

ABC7, our local ABC blog is reporting places where you can still see salmon spawn locally (that is San Francisco).  If you’re interested, check out The Bay Institute for more details.

China Environmental Law is reporting the that World Resources Institute has launched a new China FAQs covering China’s response to climate change.

HuffPo has some awesome polar bear photos.  They’re also talking about Crude, a movie which shows Chevron for the enemy of the environmental movement that they are.  Go see it!

And for the wannabe fashionistas in all of us: Frei Designs has released their Winter 2010 line, full of organic and seriously pretty dresses.

Happy Friday!

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about water pollution in China. The recent explosion at Jilin Petrochina that sent 100 tons of benzene flowing down the Songhua River was horrifying. The pollution traveled through the massive city of Harbin and is now approaching Russia’s Amur River and the city of Khabarovsk. Friends in Khabarovsk say they are just hoping that the river will freeze more quickly than expected, potentially trapping the benzene in ice before it reaches the city. Check out our statement regarding the Harbin crisis here.

The statistics about China’s pollution are staggering: Sixteen of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in China. More than a quarter of China’s population lacks access to clean drinking water. Seventy percent of China’s rivers and lakes are considered to be polluted. Earlier this year, villagers rioted over water pollution, and such protests are becoming more and more common.

But there are hopeful signs. China’s central government has recognized that environmental degradation is becoming a barrier to economic prosperity. China’s government is becoming more open to civil society organizations, as the government realizes that it cannot solve these challenges itself. Environmental groups in China can play a vital role in helping villagers work with the government and companies to mandate enforceable pollution norms, gain just compensation, and close down the most egregiously polluting factories.

In short, we can’t ignore China’s pollution issues. What we can do is help local community groups in China have more of an impact in preventing the pollution from happening.

Cheers,

David Gordon

(Executive Director)