Talk:Three Gorges Dam

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[edit] Unsound critics

Some critics in the page is too political and not relevent to the project itself. For example: "However, critics argued that increased output would not automatically mean the ease of consumption, and the reason is political. The Chinese electrical power market is monopolized by the state owned enterprises, which is the largest interest group in China because they are all run by Li Peng's relatives and close associates. With the monopoly, the price was set so high that most of the poor regions could not afford to use electricity, a fact that has already been repeated many times in many regions of China. As a result, the increased output would not bring the development in to the local area like the government has claimed, only benefit the wealthy coastal regions, further increasing the wealth disparity. Although Chinese government has recognized the problem of the monopoly of the electricity market, repeated attempts to introduce market reforms in to the electrical energy sector have all failed due to the resistance of the interest groups."

Another comment: "Critics point out that various levels of Chinese government's industrial developmental plans based on the increased power production have a fatal flaw: all of them lack sufficient pollution control plans. In fact, nearly all of the newly completed industrial sites in the region lack appropriate pollution treatment facilities and increased electricity output only worsen the problem."

Obviously, even if China did not launch the dam project, it would still need other energy source to satisfy its thirst for energy. In other words, whether or not the three gorges dam were built, the problem mentioned in those paragraphs could not be avoided. Thus, simply blame them to the dam project is unfair.

In addition, some comment is not ture. For example: "Under the order of the biggest proponent of the dam, then premier Li Peng, the cost was based on 1980's prices, with almost no inflation included in the estimate. Opposition to the dam and to the fraudulent numbers being used to promote it was willfully ignored in the report in order to ensure its passage. One of the main opponents of the dam, famous Chinese activist, Li Rui, repeatedly voiced his concerns about rigged numbers and estimates, but the pleas of Li and others fell on deaf ears. As a retired senior communist official and Mao Zedong's former secretary, Li Rui managed to evade governmental prosecution. Dai Qing was not that lucky."

However, according to a report by Xinhua News [1], the original budget (203 billion yuan) did consider the inflation. Thanks to the low inflation rate in recent years, the whole project is expected to be finished with only 180 billion yuan.

I have delete those comments. And two cents I also need to point out: first, China was in an extreme short of electricity during 2001~2004, the dam did relieve a lots to the shortage. Second, considering the 1 trillion US$ reserves held by China (= 8000 billion yuan), the three gorges dam is not so costly as some people had thought -- the Chinese government can afford it easily.

Sinolonghai 22:18, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Billion

What kind of billion is used to refer to the investment costs? The European (million million) kind or the American (thousand million)? Plop 12:53, Apr 13, 2004 (UTC)

I would guess the American version, as this is much more widely used internationally. Also, it seems unlikely that even a dam this size would cost anyway near $1,000,000,000,000. 134.219.168.14 07:58, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Not if it's in Zimbabwean dollar! Heilme 05:44, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV Dispute

Why is the neutrality of this article disputed? Stargoat 02:07, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The disputed message tag was added by User:TheSeez on Feb 18. I left a message asking him or her to explain. If the user does not respond within a few days, I suggest that you simply remove the disputed message. older ≠ wiser 02:20, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Portable water in Three Gorges Reservoir?

According to the plan, many cities both modern and ancient will be under water when the dam complete and the water level rises to form a reservoir. My question is how drinkable the entire river will become when city structures, such as gas stations, septic tanks, chemical factories line the bottom of a major water source of millions of people downstream. One may argue that cleanup will be performed before the flooding occured. Based on our experience with the "Superfund" clean up projects in the US, we learned that clean up is extremely expensive for area as small as one city block. But they are going to need to do similiar clean up for cities and cities. Will they do it or risk the health of billion of people? 67.170.239.52 05:58, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Almost ALL the text is verbatim from the following website:

http://www.chinaonline.com/refer/ministry_profiles/threegorgesdam.asp

I dont know if that is a problem

portable water? Do you mean water that can be transported from place to place, or water that is drinkable? If the later, the correct word is "potable".--Baoluo 03:47, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "In other words, hydro-dams are already obsolete"

In Three_Gorges_Dam#Debate_over_the_dam, the above statement hails fossil fuel electrical generation as superior to hydroelectric power. This is POV. Pud 12:50, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I have removed the above paragraph. Pud 22:23, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Repeated Information

Section 2 (Debate over the dam) and section 3(Summary of arguments) repeate eachother, one of these sections sould be removed. Pud 22:22, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Done. Pud 22:05, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The sections Construction Timetable, Funding Sources, Proposal of Project and Approval of Project also seem to be repeated.

[edit] Weasel Terms

The article goes on and on about the "defenders" and the "critics". We don't need constant disclaimers and classification of statements, the facts need to stand on their own. And they actually do, we just need to let them... --Joy [shallot]

Absolutely! And the controversy section is almost half the article. I am sensitive to the environmental dispute and think it can be more effective with a dose of brevity and clarity. Pud 01:00, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Some Engineers

We need a reference for the recent addition; "Some engineers also predict that the dam will not be able to hold the pressure of the water from the reservoir. If the dam should collapse, the release of the water in the reservoir would send a massive tidal wave down the river. This tidal wave would destroy anything in its path, and kill millions of people."

Duk 14:55, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I hope my addition on your talk page will be sufficient. Cyrloc 02:33, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

(per Cyrloc, This article can be found at The Damming of the Yangtze River.) Duk 15:17, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Also, would really like to see a usage chart of how the water of the dam is planned to be used. Sgt. Grunty 18:06, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Navigation: Size of vessels that can pass through the locks

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.
This article has been tagged since January 2007.

There is a panamax and a seawaymax, so what is the wuhanmax? What are the dimensions of the ship lift? How long will it take to ascend and descend through the locks? How long will it take to ascend and descend on the ship lift? Will it be possible to use the locks before the basin is full? How long is it expected to tak to fill the basin?

The basin is expected to be full in 2009. -- Beland 20:21, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Political Issue

What is the political risk occur on the three gorges dam project?

[edit] Relocation not mentioned?

The article says nothing or very little about the relocation of millions of people in thousands of villages, towns and cities that have existed for thousands of years. Im not too enlightened on the subject but it appears to be a major controversy because no dam has ever relocated so many people.

Go to http://www.irn.org/programs/threeg/resettle.html

I came here to make just this point. Much more is needed on resettlement. I think that many will agree that resettlement presents the greatest difficulty of this entire project. 71.105.98.198 00:25, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] plagiarism & npov

The content of this article is copied almost verbatim from this website: [2]

As any 14-year-old who's done a book report knows, just because it's listed in the "References" doesn't give you the right to copy it word-for-word and pass it off as your own. This is called "plagiarism". Not only that, but the website in question is in blatant opposition to the dam, so its quite likely that this anti-dam bias has carried over to the Wikipedia article. A precursory glance tells me that not only has the bias from the original website been carried over, more has been added. For example, the only mention of the sluice gates designed to prevent siltation is "sluice gates that many people believe will be ineffective". Who says they will be ineffective? "Many"? I checked the article's references and I could find no mention of this.

This project is major news, and it deserves a better article than this. And considering the controversy involved, it needs CITATIONS. I'm marking this article as NPOV. If anyone can speak Chinese, the Chinese-language version is a featured article. Try translating that. Bueller 007 01:20, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm removing the NPOV tag because your complaint above is not about NPOV. It's about crappy citations and quality of the article. I'll replace the NPOV tag with the citations-complaint tag. Tempshill 06:17, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] History of the flooding

I thought the lower Yangtze has suffered severe flooding every decade, on average, for thousands of years, but this is contradicted by this sentence in the article:

Probe International asserts that the dam does not address the real source of flooding, which is the loss of forest cover in the Yangtze watershed and the loss of 13,000 km² of lakes (which had greatly helped to alleviate floods) due to siltation, reclamation and uncontrolled development.

Can someone knowledgeable mention at that point in the article whether the flooding has demonstrably been worse over the last decades? Tempshill 06:16, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, no major flood after 1998. After the 1998 flood, Chinese goverment decided to ban forest logging and tried to recover lakes. It seems this policy works.

[edit] Generation capacity

"26 generators (with a combined generating capacity of 18.2 million kW) will be able to generate 84.7 billion kWh electricity annually". These two figures don't really agree:

84.7 billion kWh/year
= 0.232 billion kWh/day
= 232 million kWh/day
= 9.67 million kWh/hour
= 9.67 million kW

.. which is (roughly) half the "combined generating capacity of 18.2 million kW". Does this mean that the generators only average 50% of power capacity? Or is that figrue in error? (The figure for annual energy seems to be correct - see [3]). Tompw 13:55, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

maybe the generators are only 50% efficient. Who knows. Good call though. Heilme 05:54, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I also question the output of 18.2 million kW. 18.2 million kw is the same as 18200 MW. According to the article the dam is to provide 10% of China's power at the time of design and 3% when actually in service. Does the plant actually produce this amount of electricity? Ontario, Canada has a record use of around 26 000 MW during the peak period during summer. If the Dam produces the figure stated, it would produce 70% of the peak needed in Ontario. Meaning that China has a peak load of 620 000 MW! To put this in perspective, China just put on line 2 new nuclear reactors at ~600 MW net. They would need 1033 reactors to carry peak load. This is probaly more than the total in the world.

As to the capacity factor, no plant runs at 100% due to maintenance and Hydro plants are reliant on the weather. If it don't rain or snow, the water level upstream of the dam will lower and cause derating.

[edit] Sizes missing

Strangely enough, the dam sizes are missing from the article's first paragraph.. I think it is something like 186 meters high, 2350 meters wide. Does anyone have the numbers? Gil_mo 22:04, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Effect on earths axis

According to the discovery channel, the lake behind the dam will be so heavy that it will actually adjust the axis of the earth such that each day will be slightly longer. Can anyone find a verifiable web reference for this statement? --mitrebox 16:37, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

That effect is probably not significant; this isn't that big a lake. The melting of the polar icecaps is a bigger deal, because that moves sizable water from the poles towards the equator, which increases the earth's moment of inertia. This is monitored by the Earth Rotation Service. --John Nagle 17:19, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

He's probably right though that there will be an effect. The real question is how big of one. I mean jumping up and down WILL affect the rotation of the earth just not by an amount we can sense, but a 22 billion ton lake I bet will have an effect we can pick up on. Though not because it's a big effect, but just because we're damn good at detecting little changes. --Reyals 20:50, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

According to this, all the dams built around the world have together shortened the day by maybe a thousandth of a second by moving water away from the equator, letting the Earth spin a tiny bit faster with a little less mass to move at its widest part. The Discovery Channel probably just mentioned the reservoir effect because it sounds impressive. Overall, and especially applied to a single dam, it's pretty irrelevant. --Mr. Billion 06:10, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This article needs a cleanup...

I've been reading this article, and I've been reading some sentences like "Huge reservoirs by their nature..." and "...approximately 95% currently winter in wetlands that will be destroyed by the Three Gorges Dam." . Yeah, this article really needs help. Abby724 23:04, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

This article in general is highly negative towards the project and fails to cite it's sources for a number of critical passages. Here's an example:

"However, critics argued that increased output would not automatically mean the ease of consumption, and the reason is political. The Chinese electrical power market is monopolized by the state owned enterprises, which is the largest interest group in China because they are all run by Li Peng's relatives and close associates. With the monopoly, the price was set so high that most of the poor regions could not afford to use electricity, a fact that has already been repeated many times in many regions of China. As a result, the increased output would not bring the development in to the local area like the government has claimed, only benefit the wealthy coastal regions, further increasing the wealth disparity. Although Chinese government has recognized the problem of the monopoly of the electricity market, repeated attempts to introduce market reforms in to the electrical energy sector have all failed due to the resistance of the interest groups."

One would think that such a sweeping statement would be supported in some fashion. Sadly it's not. This part should probably be removed.

[edit] Photoshopped picture

Picture "Three Gorges Dam, upstream side, 26 July 2004" looks heavilly photoshopped, best seen at the "shifting" telephone / electricity mast

That is photoshoped for sure, can someone remove this?

[edit] Lifespan reuqest

Official and (various groups) predictions are both missing, though they look like they were there once supposed to be in the flood section. Can anyone fix this? mr_happyhour 29/01/07

[edit] Is this viable in the long term

The article is written well however it only touches on the problems lightly. The fact of the matter is you have a area of the world that floods every ten years. The last flooding was in 1998. The project was finished in 2006...it IS on a fault line. Therefore the countdown exists as to actually "testing" it. Don't act like this thing will last because the vast majority of projects in the world that involve forcing water in given directions don't work in the long run. Look at Libyas great man made river project and look at Boston's Big dig.

Until a system is actually tested it should not impress well upon people. Also to note the pressure will be on the PRC next year not only on this but because of the fact they are going to host the Olympics potentially at the same time. If this project collapses we're talking death and destruction on a massive scale. Picture Hurricane Katrinas damage to New Orleans but on a regional scale for a country and with a population at least fifty fold higher....

I think what you said make sense, but that is still POV. We can't possibly write about a disaster that MIGHT happen. Very much like no one dare write about a possible hurricane in New Orlean that MIGHT kill thousands of people. If it happens, then it wouldn't be a problem. But as of right now, it would be speculation. Also, please sign your post. Yongke 01:15, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] who has submitted the article???

Dear all i was really interasted to read an article about the three gorges dam, but actually what i found on wikipedia, it was an pro-american(anti-chinese) propaganda. I fully understand that Americans deem themselves the "best" country and they don't like to admit that Chinese with their "comunistic" regime may outrun them in the area of building the biggest dam. i also looked through the link to Hover dam , where none of the aspects that were reviewed in Three Gorges Dam were mentioned. Doesn't it seem ridiculous that nobody is concerned whether the electricity that hover dam is giving covers 4 or less percent of the US electricity demand. or the same greenhouse effect. i would say that the current article might be considered not informative but critical concerning the project. because when you read the article you get info only about the "bad" part of project. Thank you —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.89.1.2 (talk) 09:28, 11 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Edits

There have been a number of edits but no one has tackled some of the neutrality issues. It could be a great article. Good pics. --Stormbay 17:26, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Headline text

kelly fish is stupid

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