This is a tragic day for river conservation.
A decade after beginning construction, China began filling the Three Gorges Dam today (June 1, 2003) and has completed the first stage of the world’s biggest hydropower project.
The dam located in Sandouping near Yichang city in central Hubei province is 1000 kilometers west of Shanghai and the mouth of the Yangtze. The dam measures 181 meters high and 2309 meters wide, and the water depth of the reservoir will be 175 meters at the base of the dam. When full, the reservoir will store 39.3 billion cubic meters of water and will form a lake that is at least 600 kilometers long with an average width of 1.1 kilometers.
The environmental and social costs of this project have been huge; an estimated 1.13 million people have been relocated from 632 square kilometers of land including residents of two cities, 11 counties, and hundreds of towns and villages.
When the hydropower facilities are complete in 2009, the dam will have 26 turbines with a total capacity of 18,200 megawatts.
For more information about the dam, please link to International River Network.