Power to the people - hydro on the Yangtze river
Trip Start
Jan 30, 2007
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26
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Trip End
Dec 31, 2011
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Lijiang,
China
Sunday, June 17, 2007
We'd found it eventually, after initially going in the wrong direction. We'd headed out of town on the main road east, with vague instructions about it being 40 minutes out of town.
Some time out of town we were heading down a series of zig-zags, dropping from 2500m to 1400m down to the Yangtze river. Here, it is called the River of Golden Sands. It wasn't golden, but more light grey-green and laden with silt and sediment. Beside the bridge a new one was being built. A tall tower for the suspension bridge rose up into the blue sky like a bungee-jumping tower. In the river two clusters of iron rods sprung out of scaffolding, marking the place where supporting legs will soon stand holding a the road across the river even higher. But why a new bridge when the existing one seems perfectly adequate? And why the need for a higher bridge?
The answers were found sometime later, after we'd backtracked toward town, and then taken a turn-off to another part of the Yangtze, downstream from the bridge.
We could not have missed it. From kilometres away we saw the scar on the hillside. Or maybe it was a scab. Whatever, there was no vegetation, no trees, no terraced fields, no patchwork of rice and bananas and corn. The earth has been scrapped, its red soil turning gray in the sun.
There was even more waiting for around the corner: a new dam.
Now you are probably thinking: China, Three Gorges Dam, environmental disaster, flooding . . .
Most people have heard about China's Great Wall, and the Great New Wall - the Three Gorges Dam. Yet few have heard of clusters of new dams under construction or on the drawing board. Including one which when finished will be the second largest in the world, second only to . . . the Three Gorges Dam.
And there's talk that along the upper reaches of the Yangtze there might be 100 hydro projects, making it one of the most dammed stretches of river in the world.
Currently China is 'exploiting' only a fifth of its hydro potential, according to a government source. Developed nations utilize three-fifths. He went on to say that hydro projects don't just provide power, they also control floods, irrigate farmland, assist with navigation, and 'have a positive effect on the environment'.
So I should be very happy about these developments, right? Particularly when I recall how in 1998 floods along the Yangtze left 3,000 dead and many homeless. It resulted in the government bravely deciding to place a ban on logging to halt the erosion along China's mother river. And only last week more floods along the lower Yangtze left 100 or more dead.
I should also be happy because, like you, I am using electricity right now to write this, so you too, can use electricity to read it.
But instead of feeling glad that more electricity is being produced, I feel uneasy - and terribly small. Let me explain. As a male I have a fascination with such huge undertakings - not sure if this is innate or learned. So when I saw the size and scale of the project, it reminded me of my childhood, when I was content to play with trucks and dirt, experimenting with materials and structures. That exploration gave me a sense of what can be achieved - and what will last.
Why leads me to my sense of concern. China, a great nation with a long and rich history, also have a history of dam failures. Big ones. Sure, they aren't the only nation on earth to experience these catastrophes [I come from a country which has built hydro dams on unstable ground, in seismic zones just because they had an assembled work crew and no one wanted to disband].
So when I see an enormous structure being built on one of the greatest rivers in the world, alarm bells start to ring in my head. Something intuitively seems wrong. It is the same sense of dread you get when you build a sandcastle and then realise that when the tide turns it is going to go quick.
Questions come to mind. I look at the map and ponder about the stability of the location, where two plates collide and each year trigger earthquakes. I look at the steep-sided slopes and wonder about erosion and silt. I see the villages clinging to the sides of the hills and consider the fate of those who will be displaced higher up the slopes, or to other foreign places.
And I also worry about what we humans are trying to do, in hoping that technology will fix problems.
Perhaps I should be more up-beat: What a great structure. Isn't it showing how we humans can harness the energy of nature for our benefit? Aren't we smart - cochroaches would never come up with such an innovation?
Sure, there was much to admire about the dam site:
the curves of roads snaking on the slopes for red and yellow trucks and cranes; the orderliness of terracing and retaining walls, the Chinese characters carved in white on the hillside, the newness of Dongfeng trucks and the orange shirts of workers; the smoothness of new concrete; how a side river flowed reddy-brown into the Yangtze; the volume of water diverted through two large tunnels; how the workers can got down to the bed-rock of the river; the long reach of cranes and the two wires spanning the river which allowed truckloads of concrete to be delivered onto the site; the multitude of hard-hat wearing workers and the profussion of iron rods, which from above looked like the workings of an elaborate ant colony; the embankments of stone and spray-on concrete, hosting pioes and drains. The audacity of it all.
The dam I saw the other day is just one of many being built right now to harness the power of nature and provide some benefit for humans. Afterall, demand for power has been growing rapidly. China's double-digit growth for more than a dozen years has meant power cuts and blackouts in the industrial cities along the eastern seaboard. And China, who wants to be seen as 'clean and green', despite having the most polluted cities on the planet, reckons hydro is a good way to go. Better than nuclear power plants, eh. Better for our polluted air than more coal-fired generation plants, right? Better for the environment and for the people, right? A win-win situation, helping the impoverished south-west and giving the power-hungry east a shot in the arm.
There seems to be mixed views of the developments. One report says the Lijiang government a susbstantial increase in revenues from the dams, doubling its income. That might explain why concrete was poured on the first of eight dams, before the central government has approved a feasibility study. An official announcement later said the large-scale projects were going ahead, even though there hasn't been a thorough investigation of the geological conditions, resettlement plans, and environment protection. One statement said a feasibility study was being written up - retrospectively. There was the suggestion that the local and provincial government decided to start early, so as to take maximum advantage of the current power crisis and high demand for power. For the record, this is still a communist/social state with one ruling party.
Boomtimes in China mean an insatiable demand for energy. Witness each day another African nation receiving Chinese aid - with the implicit expectation of getting access to oil reserves in return. While China has to rely on imported oil, it does have massive coal reserves and lots of coal-fired power plants - which partly explains why most areas of China are covered in a haze of smog.
So the prospect of having 27 new dams on the Yangtze, Mekong and Salween seems quite appealing to Beijing. And the eight dams some 1000km above the Three Gorges will also stop much of the 330 million tonnes of sediment from choking the world's biggest dam.
This is what I've gleaned from Chinese media reports. Eight dams are planned along the Jinsha - as the Yangtze as known in the upper reaches - from near the first bend of the Yangtze at Shigu downstream to Panzhihua in Sichuan province and the mouth of the Yalong River. The series of dams could extend more than 550km along the river, flooding 13,000 hectars of prime farmland, displacing people in 13 towns, forcing more than 100,000 folk (mainly ethnic minorities, with their unique culture, architecture, customs and relics) from their fertile valley floors to who-knows-where. The dams won't just provide water storage and electricitty, they will also 'regulate water run-off' and prevent the built up of silt.
But wait, there's more. Water will be diverted from the Yangtze to the capital of Yunnan, Kunming, where its main water source, a large inland freshwater lake, has been polluted with sewage and chemicals.
Over the last few years I've seen dams built along some tributaries of the Yangtze. While impression in terms of engineering feats, there seems to be a lack of awareness of the power of nature and how a riverine ecosystem survives with one essential ingredient - water. One raging river is now empty, with no discernable flow of water and just a few stagnant pools. Another dam built on an earthquake fault seems to be filling up not just with water, but with sediment and rocks. Both are located within an area designated by the UN as World Heritage areas.
The only heartening news I've come across is the story - reported only outside China - of some villages who found surveyors putting in pegs around their settlement, and held them hostage until they got some answers from officials and a halt to any work. For the 100,000 people who will be resettled along the river valley, there is not much they can do. They will become economic and environmental refugees.
