Three Gorges Dam | Facts, Construction, Benefits, & Problems (2024)

FAQs

What are the benefits of the construction of the Three Gorges Dam? ›

On one hand, the benefits of the Three Gorges Dam are flood control, power generation, navigation, aquaculture, tourism, ecological protection, environmental purification, development-oriented resettlement, transfer of water from southern China to northern China, and water supply and irrigation.

The Three Gorges Dam project threatens many endangered species that are native to the Yangtze River. The baiji dolphin, the ancient river sturgeon and the finless porpoise depend on the Yangtze for their survival. The population of Siberian cranes in Poyang Lake will also be affected by the dam.

The lifespan of the Three Gorges Dam will be beyond 100 years, Zhang Chaoran, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering and an expert of hydropower-engineering, told the Global Times.

While the construction of the Three Gorges Dam was an engineering feat, it has also been fraught with controversy: construction of the dam caused the displacement of at least 1.3 million people and the destruction of natural features and countless rare architectural and archaeological sites.

The purpose of a dam is to impound (store) water, wastewater or liquid borne materials for any of several reasons, such as flood control, human water supply, irrigation, livestock water supply, energy generation, containment of mine tailings, recreation, or pollution control.

Dams change the way rivers function. They can trap sediment, burying rock riverbeds where fish spawn. Gravel, logs, and other important food and habitat features can also become trapped behind dams. This negatively affects the creation and maintenance of more complex habitat (e.g., riffles, pools) downstream.

The Three Gorges Dam is situated squarely in central China. Its environmental impacts, however, reach much further downstream in the forms of erosion, ecosystem degradation and landslides. Its social impacts affect many surrounding areas, namely urban centers.

Situated on the Yangtze River in China, the Three Gorges Dam is the largest hydroelectric dam in the world. A Xylem solution at the dam provides data that helps prevent flooding and droughts.

The Three Gorges Dam is about 594 feet (181 meters) tall and 7,770 feet (2,335 meters) long. The Three Gorges Reservoir extends 370 miles (600 kilometers) along the Yangtze River upstream from the dam. At full capacity, the reservoir has a surface water area of over 417 square miles (1,080 square kilometers).

Social impacts include increased poverty among people, especially women, displaced by the reservoir. A clear difficulty for managing the Three Gorges Project was the lack of a review after construction and commissioning to compare outcomes to estimates from the official EIS report.

Why justify the building of the Three Gorges Dam? ›

The major justification for building the dam is flood control; alternatives include reforestation in the watershed, smaller dams on upper tributaries, and reversing the movement of population to dangerously exposed areas along the middle and lower Yangzi.

Key problems included the danger of dam collapse, the displacement of some 1.3 million people (critics insisted the figure was actually 1.9 million) living in more than 1,500 cities, towns, and villages along the river, and the destruction of magnificent scenery and countless rare architectural and archaeological sites ...

Together these factors have made Mosul Dam the "most dangerous dam in the world", because there are "almost certainly an unprecedented level of untreated voids in the dam's foundation."

One of the most controversial aspects of the mega-project was its enormous cost for villagers who had lived for centuries on the banks of the river. To make way for the dam's massive reservoir, about 1.4 million people were uprooted, their ancestral homes demolished, communities broken up and farmlands flooded.

An important function of the dam is to control flooding, which is a major problem for the seasonal river of the Yangtze. Millions of people live downstream of the dam, with many large, important cities like Wuhan, Nanjing, and Shanghai located adjacent to the river.

It stands approximately 600 feet tall and stretches across a mile-wide valley, producing a 400-mile-long reservoir across 1000 towns. One of the benefits of this dam is it will manage Chang Jiang's frequent flooding that causes significant damage and fatalities in the 20th century.

China's leaders justify the Three Gorges dam—and the associated risks—on the basis of three main objectives and needs: to regulate the flow of the Yangtze River, increase national power generation, and improve navigability on the river.