China's Mega Dam!
Trip Start
Feb 25, 2006
1
68
148
Trip End
Jun 24, 2009
Yichang,
China
Saturday, September 8, 2007
If you zoom into about 70% magnification on my satellite map on this blog, you can see this massive dam that's about 1.4 miles long (~2300M) or about as long as the Golden Gate Bridge. At 100% zoom, you can see the cracks and the water spilling through the dam already. Construction started in December 1994. When the project is finished in 2009, it will back up the Yangtze River and create a lake that's over 400 miles long and will raise the water level almost 600 feet(180M) submerging several large cities, hundreds of towns and over 1300 villages (some estimates are as high as 1700) along the river front. The loss of ancient artifacts caused by the dam is immeasurable. Over 4000 archaeological dig sites have been flooded already and another 8000 untouched sites will be flooded by the time the dam is finished
On a Clear Day
. Discoveries of artifacts thousands of years old have been washed away while dig sites were still in the process of excavation. The archaeological loss could be the equivalent of damming the Nile and flooding the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. Flood waters will claim an area of over 36,000 square miles AND I thought I had problems when my house flooded with 3 feet of water. Entire cities with a history of over 1000 years have been submerged already. Fuling city has decided to fight the rising waters. They've built a 600 foot wall to protect a large portion of the city, but they had to demolish 1/3 of the city in order to build the wall. But with all that said, the construction of the dam is not all bad. When finished, the dam will generate 18.2 million KWh per year and provide 1/10th of the power for all of china. Hydro power is clean power and will reduce the need to burn ~50 million tons of coal per year. I for one am in favor of anything that will reduce 100 million tons of Carbon dioxide into the air each year. God knows China could use a break in air pollution and so could I. If I ever go back, I know I could use some cleaner air to breathe and a total ban on cigarette smoking. I think at one point if I had a gun, I would have shot anyone blowing smoke in my general direction as it caused my lungs to seize up making a case of SARS look like the common cold.Well I hope you wanted to know a lot of information about the Dam
Back Side Dam View
. I hadn't planned on the intro being that long, but it was interesting to me so maybe you enjoyed it too. The final part of the cruise was the optional tour to The Three Gorges Dam. I had heard it was pretty good and I was very curious to see this monumental tribute to the arrogance of Mao and how little he cared about the people that inexplicably love him so much. At least I can say that I went to the Dam before it collapsed and killed millions of people. The dam isn't even finished yet, and they've already found cracks in it. Even after death, the dam is Mao's last dying gasp to add millions more to his already grave total of Chinese people that he has murdered and/or killed as a result of his policies, reforms and programs. I've been to Tienanmen Square at least 4 times and have never gone in to see him. As you can tell, I'm writing this from outside the borders of China right now and won't publish it until after I get another China Visa. (I'm not going back into China until November so I'll have to delay publishing this story until I leave.) When we got to the Dam, you could see that China is not immune to the threats of terrorism. This is the only checkpoint in China where security guards actually watch the X-ray screens and pay attention to the beeping sounds of the metal detectors. You should have seen the faces on the security guards when Annabel sent a bottle of wine through the Xray machine. Their training obviously didn't include wine bottles as they let it through though without question
Dam Park
. You can't even take 90 ml of liquid on a plane, but they let a 750ml bottle of wine through. Can you imagine what 750ml of nitroglycerin can do to the largest dam in the world? Once passed the gates, a bus shuttles you off on a circuit around the dam so you can see it from every angle and even drive across it. If the weather wasn't so poor, I bet it would be a pretty impressive sight. I've seen videos of the making of the dam and it is quite impressive. If it doesn't collapse, it will be an engineering marvel. The locking system is big enough to handle a major cruise liner and of course container ships. Unfortunately, with the bottle of wine and the size of the tour area, we lost track of time and got back to the tour bus late where everyone was waiting about 20 minutes for us (which one guy felt the need to remind me of quite rudely). I just said, "Lao Wais". It seemed like a good enough excuse as I had Annabel and Helen with me. Blame it on the whiteys. 
