The impact of the Three Gorges Dam

The Three Gorges Dam construction project in China will change the future. There are many advantages to this construction project. However, the dam also has its disadvantages. Its advantages, are that, firstly, the dam will produce a huge amount of electricity, in fact over 100 terawatts(1 terawatt = 1,000,000,000,000 watts). This will also reduce lot of coal consumption by 31 million tonnes, and decrease China's environmental damage. The emission of 100 million tonnes of greenhouse gas, millions of tonnes of dust, 1 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide, 370 thousand tonnes of nitric oxide, 10 thousand tonnes of carbon monoxide and a significant amount of mercury will be cut.



However, the construction of the dam means that huge areas behind the dam will be flooded, not only displacing 1.13m people from their homes, but destroying undiscovered cultural artifacts and artifacts that cannot be moved into museums or safe places, such as the hanging coffins. Relocation of displaced residents(or important items) in the area adds to the costs of the dam. Also, sedimentation is a problem. Sedimentation building up behind the dam is not really considered as a problem because there are more dams behind the Three Gorges Dam that will prevent that. Sediment not moving past the dam is the problem. Shanghai is down river from the dam and rests on a bed of silt. So long as silt has been carried downstream, Shanghai has been safe from flooding. However, if the net increase of sediment to the bed of silt becomes negative, Shanghai will become vulnerable to inundation.

I hope that the Chinese government will be able to solve these problem so that the dam will be an overall success. If the problems that the dam causes are solved, this will be a great achievement. It will help China reduce its dependency on coal and other non-renewable, environmentally-unfriendly sources of energy.

Three Gorges Dam: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam