China's controversial Three Gorges Dam nears finish

YICHANG, CHINA - China's Three Gorges dam draws a step nearer to completion with the pouring of the last concrete on Saturday, but debate rages over the environmental and social consequences of the world's largest hydropower project.

The dam, where workers are still toiling on the 2,309-meter (7,400-ft) long expanse of concrete spanning the Yangtze River, will generate 18 gigawatts of hydropower when it is complete and, it is hoped, tame floods on the notorious waterway.

But the $25 billion project is as much a symbol of China's own power as anything else.

The broad streets and new towers of Yichang, the city of 4 million that is the gateway to the project, attest to the investment poured in since the dam was approved.

But some residents are also eyeing critics' warnings of environmental damage they say in the long run will outweigh the benefits.

"We hear there could be problems related to geology and ecology, but it won't really be clear until the future what those problems are," said a resident surnamed Xie, holding his baby son as he headed out to buy steamed buns for breakfast.

Environmentalists say the water quality in the river has already deteriorated, fish species are declining and silt trapped behind the dam is causing erosion -- even as far away as the estuary in coastal Shanghai.

They warn the dam's reservoir, which will reach a depth of 156 meters (515 feet) by October, will turn into a cesspool of raw sewage and industrial chemicals backing onto Chongqing, the metropolis of 30 million upstream from Yichang.

For the more than 1 million residents already flooded out of their homes, the dam's consequences are all too real.

"Resettlement will determine whether the Three Gorges project is a successful one or not," Li Yongan, president of the Three Gorges Project Development Corporation, told reporters. "If they are dissatisfied, people can report to the local government."

But petitioners say it is the local governments that are the problem, pocketing some of the 25 billion yuan ($3.1 billion) Li says has been spent on resettlement.

The government said this week it will provide funds to support resettled migrants for the next 20 years, but critics say no amount of money can replace the whole cities and archaeological treasures submerged by the waters.

"They had their communities, their relatives, their ways of life and their skills," Dai Qing, an activist who has lobbied against the project, told Reuters.

"A lot of migrants still haven't adapted to their new lives."

Another 300,000, about 80,000 of them this year, are still to be moved before the reservoir rises to its full level by 2009.

The effects of the sheer weight of the 600 km (375 mile) lake are also not understood, with some geologists saying it could make the area more prone to landslides and earthquakes.

The list of concerns about the project have led critics such as Dai to argue that it is political folly, pushed forward to prove a point about China's prowess despite the human and environmental costs.

"They had to realize this project to say 'this is something you foreigners couldn't do, but us Chinese could do it, our socialist system could do it'," she said.

Cao Guangjing, vice-president of the Three Gorges building company, said he had complete confidence in the dam.

"The Three Gorges proves China can build anything well," he told reporters. "I personally have never had any doubts. I believe in it 100 percent."