Two Years Later, New Rumblings Over Origins of Sichuan Quake

Science 5 March 2010:

Two Years Later, New Rumblings Over Origins of Sichuan Quake

Richard A. Kerr and Richard Stone
 
BEIJING—When experts suggested that the disastrous 2008 Wenchuan earthquake might have been triggered by the reservoir behind the Zipingpu Dam, establishment scientists in China remained largely silent (Science, 16 January 2009, p. 322). Now they've weighed in, ruling out reservoir triggering. But
many earth scientists don't buy their arguments.


No large quake had ruptured the Beichuan-Yinxiu fault in southwestern China's Sichuan Province in at least a millennium or two. Then engineers built Zipingpu Dam on the Min River just 500 meters from the fault and in late September 2005 began filling it with upward of 900 million tons of water. Two-and-a-half years later, the magnitude-7.9 Wenchuan earthquake got started 5 kilometers from the reservoir.

In the January issue of International Water Power and Dam Construction, three dam engineers at the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research here argue that the Zipingpu-Wenchuan situation was so unlike that of the four largest known reservoir-triggered earthquakes—all in the magnitude-6 range—that there could not have been a connection between reservoir and quake. The authors, led by structural engineer Chen Houqun, who has co-authored China's design code for building earthquake resistance into dams, contend that the timing was mere coincidence.

Oh Three Gorges.

Can't really post this with a straight face. Ah well, we'll hear more things like this when we actually visit the dam.

Also, if you click through to the link, you can hear a robo-voice read the article aloud in English.
=D

http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90778/90860/6899687.html


Three Gorges Dam champions clean energy program
09:02, February 23, 2010

Long before climate change became a global issue, inspiring reams of editorial coverage and the Copenhagen Summit, the Three Gorges Dam, the largest construction project in China since the building of the Great Wall, was attracting environmental ire around the world.

Now the mammoth decade-old project, the world's largest hydropower plant, contains a vast 175 m deep reservoir and stretches 660 km along the Yangtze River in central China. To date, it has generated 364.6 billion kW of electricity.

The China Three Gorges Corporation, the dam's operator, believes that the project's success has confounded the criticism of overseas commentators who sought to highlight its potentially negative impact on the environment. In fact, says the company, the dam is now playing a crucial role in reducing China's overall level of greenhouse gas emissions.

Li Yong'an, president of the China Three Gorges Corporation, recently received an award for his company's contribution to the development of China's clean energy program.

Three Gorges and the Freedom of Information Act?

"The Three Gorges dam on China’s Yangtze is the world’s largest and most expensive dam, though the final cost is unknown because of state secrecy. Estimates of its cost vary between $32 billion and $88 billion."


Interesting use of new legal mechanisms by an ordinary citizen to gain more information on Three Gorges. We'll see how this turns out.

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Rule of law meets the Three Gorges dam

Patricia Adams
Probe International / January 27, 2010

Ren Xinghui, a Beijing resident, has made headlines in the Chinese Internet press by using the country’s new disclosure law to request information about government funding of the Three Gorges dam.

Last October, Mr. Ren filed formal requests for bonds, loans, special electricity charges, among other sources of financing, from three key government departments in charge of the dam: the Ministry of Finance, the Three Gorges Project Construction Committee Executive Office under the State Council and the China Three Gorges Corporation.

The Three Gorges dam on China’s Yangtze is the world’s largest and most expensive dam, though the final cost is unknown because of state secrecy. Estimates of its cost vary between $32 billion and $88 billion. Corruption has plagued the project’s resettlement operation, which has flooded nearly 1.2 million people from their homes.

According to the law, Mr. Ren’s request for data on the dam’s cost is entirely by the book: Article one of the regulation, which came into force on May 1, 2008, states that its purpose is to safeguard “the legal access to government information by citizens, legal persons and other organizations, improving the transparency of government work, promoting the administration according to law and giving full play to the role of government information of serving the people’s production, living and social and economic activities.”

Mr. Ren's attempt to use the law to secure government spending records is pioneering. Government officials who fielded his initial requests last October seemed caught off guard, denied knowledge of such things, couldn’t find responsible officials (they were away on a business trip or occupied in meetings), cited internal procedures for prohibiting the submission of the requests and directed Mr. Ren to the Propaganda Office.

Now, having considered his initial request, the Ministry of Finance has rejected it on the grounds that the income and expenditure of the dam project was made available in 2008 and that Mr. Ren’s own production, domestic or research affairs are not affected by the expenditures, so he has no right to the data.

Mr. Ren disputes this and argues that he, like all Chinese electricity consumers, has been forced to contribute to the Three Gorges Construction Fund through a special charge in their electricity rates. On that basis, he says, he is entitled to see the financing and cost data.

On Monday, Ren Xinghui filed his suit against the Ministry of Finance with Beijing’s No. 1 Intermediate People's Court, asking it to decree that the Ministry of Finance provide the data on the cost of the Three Gorges to him. The Court is now reviewing whether to accept the case.

URL: http://www.probeinternational.org/three-gorges-probe/rule-law-meets-three-gorges-dam

Greenwashing Hydropower aticle from Worldwatch

You can read it online or download portions as pdf.

Also noteworthy is a photo spread related to the 3 Gorges Dam on pages 16-17 of the new issue.

With a Proven Track Record of Environmental Destruction, Why Are Big Dams Still Being Built?

Washington, D.C.-Despite high environmental and social costs, a major resurgence in dam construction worldwide is now under way, driven by infusions of new capital from developing countries and a public campaign by the dambuilding industry to greenwash hydropower as a source of clean energy. In the latest issue of World Watch magazine, a look at the heavy dam-building activity in China, the Amazon basin, and Africa illustrates the risks involved.

"The dambuilding industry is greenwashing hydropower with a public relations offensive designed to convince the world that the next generation of dams will provide additional sources of clean energy and help to ease the effects of climate change," write Aviva Imhof and Guy R. Lanza, authors of "Greenwashing Hydropower" in the January/February World Watch. "In some of the world's last great free-flowing-river basins, such as the Amazon, the Mekong, the Congo, and the rivers of Patagonia, governments and industry are pushing forward with cascades of massive dams, all under the guise of clean energy."

Big dams have frequently imposed high social and environmental costs and longterm economic tradeoffs, such as lost fisheries and tourism potential and flooded agricultural and forest land. According to the independent World Commission on Dams, most projects have failed to compensate affected people for their losses and to adequately mitigate environmental impacts. Local people have rarely had a meaningful say in whether or how a dam is implemented, or received their fair share of project benefits.

The authors explain that the industry's attempt to repackage hydropower as a green, renewable technology is both misleading and unsupported by the facts. In general, the cheapest, cleanest, and fastest solution is to invest in energy efficiency.

Despite alternatives, however, the promise of profits for the hydropower industry, their network of consultants, and host-country bureaucracies often trumps the impacts on people and ecosystems.

"A vigorous assault on corruption, plus technology transfer and financial assistance: These are the keys to allowing developing countries to leapfrog to a sustainable, twenty-first century energy regime," write Imhof and Lanza. "The stakes are high, because healthy rivers, like all intact ecosystems, are priceless. The alternative, quite simply, is a persistent legacy of human and environmental destruction."

Three Gorges may force 300,000 more to relocate

The impacts and unanticipated consequences of large hydro continue to rise, as the Guardian reports. We'll be getting to this topic in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned!

Three Gorges Dam may force relocation of a further 300,000 people
Chinese government report recommends the relocation of an extra 300,000 people at risk of landslides and water pollution

Jonathan Watts
Friday 22 January 2010

A further 300,000 people must be relocated from around China's Three Gorges dam - in addition to the 1.2 million who have already been forced to leave their homes, according to a draft government report.
Less than two years after completion of the world's biggest hydroelectric power plant, site engineers have found landslides and water pollution are more severe than anticipated, prompting calls for drastic remedial efforts.

In a report drawn up over the past year, the managers of the project and regional officials recommend the withdrawal of people from long stretches of the reservoir's banks.