[NYTr] China banks on hydropower to cut emissions, but at huge human cost

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Intl Herals Tribune - Nov 18, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/19/asia/19dam.php


China banks on hydropower to cut emissions, but at huge human cost

By Jim Yardley

JIANMIN VILLAGE, China: Last year, Chinese officials celebrated the
completion of the Three Gorges Dam by releasing a list of 10 world
records. As in: The Three Gorges is the world's biggest dam, biggest
power plant and biggest consumer of dirt, stone, concrete and steel.
Ever. Even the project's official tally of 1.13 million displaced
people made the list as record No. 10.

Today, the Communist Party is hoping the dam does not become China's
biggest folly. In recent weeks, Chinese officials have admitted that the
dam was spawning environmental problems like water pollution and
landslides that could become severe. Equally startling, officials want
to begin a new relocation program that would be bigger than the first.

The rising controversy makes it easy to overlook what could have been
listed as world record No. 11: The Three Gorges Dam is the world's
biggest man-made producer of electricity from renewable energy.
Hydropower, in fact, is the centerpiece of one of China's most praised
green initiatives, a plan to rapidly expand renewable energy by 2020.

The Three Gorges Dam, then, lies at the uncomfortable center of China's
energy conundrum: The nation's roaring economy is addicted to dirty,
coal-fired power plants that pollute the air and belch greenhouse gas
emissions that contribute to global warming. Dams are much cleaner
producers of electricity, but they have displaced millions of people in
China and carved a stark environmental legacy on the landscape.

"It's really kind of a no-win situation," said Jonathan Sinton, China
program manager at the International Energy Agency. "There are no ideal
choices."

For now, China's choice is to keep building big dams, even as the social
and environmental impacts of the projects are increasingly questioned.
The Three Gorges Dam is projected as an anchor in a string of hydropower
"mega-bases" planned for the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze
River. By 2020, China wants to nearly triple its hydropower capacity, to
300 gigawatts.

The Communist Party leaders who broke ground on the Three Gorges project
in 1994 had promised that China could build the world's biggest dam,
manage the world's biggest human resettlement and also protect the
environment. Critics warned of potential dangers, but saw those
objections pushed aside. Now, critics say, the problems at the Three
Gorges underscore the risks of the new phase of dam building, which
could displace more than 300,000 people.

"In western China, the one-sided pursuit of economic benefits from
hydropower has come at the expense of relocated people, the environment
and the land and its cultural heritage," Fan Xiao, a Sichuan Province
geologist and a critic of the Three Gorges project, said via e-mail.
"Hydropower development is disorderly and uncontrolled, and it has
reached a crazy scale."

Advocates say hydropower is one of China's richest and least tapped
energy resources. Even though much of the country is plagued with
drought and water shortages, China also boasts a knot of important
rivers that flow out of the Tibetan High Plateau. Currently, China uses
only about one-fourth of its hydropower potential.

At the same time, China's insatiable appetite for energy is mostly being
met with a building spree of coal-fired power plants. Coal accounts for
67 percent of China's energy supply. Just last year, China added 102
gigawatts of generating capacity, as much as the entire capacity of
France.

To ease its addiction to coal, China wants 15 percent of the country's
energy consumption to come from renewable sources by 2020, compared with
7.5 percent today. To do that, it is developing solar, wind and biomass
so rapidly that some experts say the country could soon become a world
leader in renewable energy. Even so, forecasts show these sources will
amount to less than 4 percent of the energy supply by 2020.

Nuclear is another popular alternative, and officials plan to double its
capacity by 2020. Yet even such a huge expansion will only amount to 4
percent of the energy supply.

Hydropower, by contrast, already accounts for 6 percent of the power
supply and has major growth potential. Chen Deming, one of the
government's top economic planners, said hydropower was a critical
noncarbon energy source and described the negative impacts of dams as
"controllable." He said officials would emphasize environmental
protection and resettlement issues on future projects.

"We believe that large-scale hydropower plants contribute a lot to
reduce energy consumption, air and environmental pollution," Chen said
at a September news conference. China, he added, planned to develop
hydropower on "a considerable scale."

Internationally, a debate has raged for years about large dams (those
higher than 50 feet) because of their legacy of disruption. Many
environmentalists contend that electricity generated by large dams
should not be considered renewable because of the social and
environmental damage that follow many projects. The United States has
even recently decommissioned some large dams.

Tension about large dams is also rising in China. Environmentalists are
pushing for tighter regulation and more public input before projects are
approved. Resettlement remains a volatile issue. Two years ago, more
than 100,000 people protested the Pubugou dam project in Sichuan
Province, until the riot police crushed the demonstration.

President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao appear less enamored
of the big projects than their predecessors. Neither man attended last
year's ceremony for the completion of the Three Gorges Dam. Wen has
demanded environmental reviews for different proposed sites. Yet with
the momentum of the surging economy, most projects continue moving
forward.

The renewed debate about the Three Gorges project offers a view of the
competing pressures on China. Equal parts vanity project and
technological marvel, the Three Gorges was initially conceived for
flood control, not for any efforts to promote clean energy.

Today, dams are big business in China, and profit-seeking is another
major reason behind the new hydropower push.

Few if any hydropower projects have ever been more controversial than
the Three Gorges. Entire cities were inundated along with ancient
temples and other landmarks. Today, many of the people resettled by the
project are still struggling to survive. For years, despite the
problems, Chinese officials rarely criticized the project or expressed
concern.

And then, unexpectedly, the silence broke.

At a forum on Sept. 25 in the city of Wuhan, a group of officials and
experts gathered for a discussion about the Three Gorges Dam that would
ripple across China and beyond. A keynote speaker at the forum was Wang
Xiaofeng, a point person on the project for China's State Council, the
highest executive body in the government.

Wang began by reciting different accomplishments and reminding his
audience that China had overcome widespread skepticism to prove it could
build the project. But with the construction of the hydropower station
entering its final phase, "environmental security" represented the new
challenge, he said.

According to a transcript of his speech, Wang warned that "hidden
dangers," if left untended, could breed disaster. He said that increased
pressures on the shoreline "may become causes for water pollution,
landslides and other geological disasters."

Water quality in the main reservoir remained stable, but Wang said
pollution was worsening in tributaries because of high levels of
nitrates and phosphates that had already endangered drinking water in
some areas. He said an algal bloom from too many nutrients earlier this
year on the Xiao River had contaminated drinking water for 50,000
people in Fengdu County  an episode never reported in the Chinese news
media.

Wang framed his speech like a wake-up call. said officials needed to
address environmental problems "at the root." He warned that government
agencies were not prepared for emergencies and had no response plan for
natural disasters such as an earthquake. He declared that China would
now "work hard to build a first-class hydropower project and to create a
first-class environment."

"The environmental work of the Three Gorges Dam will be a long and hard
road," he cautioned.

The next day, Xinhua, the government's news agency, carried a few
comments from Wang and other regional officials in an article that ran
beneath a blaring headline on the agency's English-language Web site:
"China Warns of Environmental 'Catastrophe' From Three Gorges Dam."

Longtime critics of the project felt vindicated, if astonished, at the
official concession. "In more than 20 years that have passed, the dam
authority and official Chinese media have been reluctant to utter one
word about problems with the big dam project," Dai Qing, a prominent dam
critic, wrote on the Web site of Probe International, an environmental
group.

"Instead, they have tried to cover up, make false reports and deceive
ordinary Chinese people," she wrote.

In Beijing, some observers wondered if Hu and Wen had allowed the public
airing in order to distance themselves from a project built by earlier
leaders. Others speculated that officials in the reservoir region were
publicizing the problems because the last construction phase ends in
2009. New problems could mean new streams of government financing.

Most of all, though, the mere suggestion of a "catastrophe" raised an
alarming question: What constitutes a catastrophe at the world's largest
dam?

Fan, the geologist and critic, said the Three Gorges region had a
history of geological fragility. He said the worst situation would be a
major earthquake induced by pressure from the rising water  a
possibility that officials have long discounted. Heavy silt
accumulation, if seemingly less alarming, could also pose severe
problems upstream as it gradually builds up the floor of the reservoir.

Silt accumulation has steadily reduced the capacity of other Chinese
dams to store water, which has also reduced electrical generation.
Planners of the Three Gorges Dam estimated that sedimentation could
become a problem upstream in the city of Chongqing within 20 years.

But Fan and other scientists say sedimentation is already happening at a
rate that could create flooding and shipping problems in Chongqing much
sooner than expected.

Proponents of the dam have quickly defended the project on the Internet
and in Chinese publications. Xinhua, which helped fuel the debate, has
since taken a more measured tone. Zhang Boting, an advocate for the
hydropower industry, said environmental issues were initially
exaggerated in the news media. He said national statistics showed that
overall water quality was improving and contended that his own research
found that the number of landslides had declined since dam construction
began.

"There is no hard evidence to show there is dramatic change," said
Zhang, who is vice secretary general of the China Hydropower
Engineering Society, an industry trade group. "We have problems, but we
predicted those problems a long time ago. We are tackling those
problems."

Zhang said the situation is really about local bureaucracies facing the
end of the project and looking for more financing. "Electricity is such
a lucrative industry," Zhang said. "The Three Gorges is like a piece of
fat. Everybody wants to have a bite."

China once was so poor it struggled to build big projects. Today, dams
are a huge business in China, and the giant utilities that build them
are soaked with government and private investment money. When the
corporation building the Three Gorges project publicly listed a
subsidiary in 2003, share prices surged by 45 percent as the company
raised nearly $1.2 billion in a single day.

In 2002, the country began to dismantle its inefficient electric power
monopoly. Five power giants were created and encouraged to exploit
energy resources at a time when China was encountering sporadic regional
blackouts. Competitive pressures drove each utility to pursue as many
energy projects as possible in order to secure future market share.

Today, the Three Gorges Dam is the anchor of a planned "cascade" system
of 12 hydropower mega-bases on the middle and upper reaches of the
Yangtze. Over all, officials have said more than 100 hydropower
stations could be built on the upper Yangtze basin within two decades.
The government-owned corporation that built the Three Gorges Dam has
already started construction on 3 of the 12 large projects.

One of those sites, Xiluodu, will be the country's second-largest
hydropower station when it is completed in 2015. Two years ago,
regulators halted construction at Xiluodu because the project lacked a
proper environmental impact study. But work has quietly resumed. In
November, crews succeeded in damming the Jinsha River, the tributary
that forms the upper reaches of the Yangtze.

Environmentalists worry that cascade systems create a domino effect in
which one mega-dam begets another.

New laws require dam projects to undergo environmental impact studies
and also provide opportunities for public comment and oversight. But
those laws are easy to circumvent, or ignore. Xiluodu, for example, is
being built in a national protection zone for several species of
endangered fish.

"These large dams will have a lot of impacts, sometimes irreversible,"
said Ma Jun, an environmentalist and the author of "China's Water
Crisis." "We have to look at them very carefully and follow our legal
requirements very strictly."

Richard Taylor, executive director of the International Hydropower
Association, predicted that the pace of construction would slow down as
China began to pay more attention to strategic planning for social and
environmental issues. "There are some key players in China who want to
be part of that more progressive approach," he said.

Dam opponents have scored a handful of victories. In 2004, Wen, the
prime minister, unexpectedly suspended plans for 13 dams along the Nu
River. The Nu passes through a Unesco World Heritage site and is one of
the last free-flowing rivers in Asia. In Sichuan Province, a large dam
that would have inundated a Qin Dynasty waterworks was canceled after
opponents framed the project as an attack on China's cultural heritage.

But opposition is still often steamrolled. The 100,000 protesters at
Pubugou dam created a crisis that reached the desk of Wen. Ultimately,
farmers saw little improvement in the compensation package. Last year,
the authorities executed a leader of the protests for what they said
was his role in the death of a policeman. Now the dam is moving forward.

And so are others. The Xiluodu Dam will force the relocation of more
than 100,000 people in the city of Zhaotong. City officials are
concerned. A report written by Chinese scientists and Zhaotong
officials bluntly addressed the potential problems.

"Past experience has also taught that hydropower development will not
necessarily improve local social and economic conditions," the authors
wrote. "There is widespread concern that, although the hydropower
stations are as modern as those in Europe, the residents will become as
poor as people in Africa."

For the past decade, the only two directions for people in the Three
Gorges region have been up or out. Large, white markers etched with the
number "175" are placed on many hillsides. No other explanation is
needed; everything below has already been inundated or will be when the
reservoir reaches 175 meters, or about 574 feet, in 2009.

Resettlement began in 1997 as an upward migration. Prime Minister Wen
has said that dams have displaced roughly 23 million people in China.
The Three Gorges was supposed be a model for resettlement. Farmers could
relocate to newly built cities or stay on the farm, albeit on higher
ground. But studies now show the region's population density is almost
twice the national average. In many villages, too many farmers are
perched on steep slopes, sharing too little land.

The upward migration also damaged the environment. Farmers cleared land
to plant crops or rows of orange trees. Deforestation contributed to
soil erosion and destabilized many hillsides. Today, construction crews
are busy reinforcing crumbling hillsides above the reservoir with
concrete. In the mountains, soil erosion is endemic. In the village of
Pinggao, Li Shuyi, 50, walked down the sloped fields, pointing out
cracks in the earth.

"Whenever it rains, the soil starts flooding downhill," Li said. "The
problem is getting more and more serious in recent years."

This summer, a tremor shook Pinggao like jelly, leaving cracks in
several farmhouses. When rainfall is heavy, Li said his house swayed so
much "you can hear the tiles cracking on the roof."

He said, "Villagers are getting very worried."

Problems have been evident for several years. As far back as 2000, the
central government had already started changing national policies to
address environmental decay. The clue had been the horrific floods along
the Yangtze, which claimed thousands of lives in 1998. Deforestation and
soil erosion along the upper reaches of the Yangtze had abetted the
disaster; silted riverbeds became elevated highways for the raging
currents.

Beijing ordered a national ban on timber cutting and began reforesting
millions of acres along the Yangtze, including in the Three Gorges
region. Many farmers who had moved uphill now were told to plant a
stabilizing green belt along the shoreline. To further ease pressure on
the land, Three Gorges officials changed the relocation policy,
promising free land and financial help for people who moved to other
provinces.

But leaving the region was not a good solution for many farmers  or a
permanent one. More than 100,000 people left, but thousands have since
returned, despite no longer holding local residency permits. In 2002, a
group of 57 villagers left Daqiao Village above the Yangtze for a
village in Jiangxi Province. Today, all 57 have returned.

"We tried to grow rice in Jiangxi," said Lin Shengping, 51, whose adult
children had stayed in Daqiao. "The harvest was really small. So we all
came back. We don't have money, either in Jiangxi or here. But at home,
I can take care of my grandchildren so my son and daughter-in-law can
go out to work."

Now, though, officials want people to move again. On Oct. 12, the Xinhua
news agency disclosed an unexpected bombshell: At least four million
people in Chongqing Municipality would have to be moved by 2020,
including at least two million living in the reservoir region.

Chongqing officials quickly tried to deflect any suggestion that the
plan represented another resettlement. Instead, they said, it
represented a national experiment approved by Beijing in June.
Chongqing would become a "pilot reform city." Just as Beijing used
"special economic zones" like Shenzhen to kick-start the country's
economic reforms during the 1980s, Chongqing would become a laboratory
for trying to eliminate the urban-rural income gap.

"We're talking about separate issues," said Lang Cheng, director of
Chongqing's Immigration Bureau, which helped oversee the dam
resettlement plan. "One is the Three Gorges relocation. One is the city
plan for Chongqing for the future."

For Chongqing officials, the emphasis was on urbanization. Rural
residents would have the choice to move to the outskirts of the city.
Officials said the plan would offer enticements not available to
migrants in the more prosperous coast, like residency permits enabling
new arrivals to qualify for social welfare benefits.

But officials also said they hoped the plan would provide relief for the
degraded land around the reservoir. "These relocated people sacrificed a
lot for the Three Gorges Dam and their living standard dropped," said Xu
Yuming, a researcher involved in planning the program. "Now we are
facing a new challenge of how to improve their living standards. The
quality of land is getting worse and worse the higher they go. And
there are now more people than the land can sustain."

In the isolated mountain villages above the reservoir, farmers have
heard nothing about a new resettlement plan. For many farmers, the
immediate concern is the land beneath their feet. Landslides are
striking different hillsides as the rising water places more pressure
on the shoreline, local officials say. In Fengjie County, officials
have designated more than 800 disaster-prone areas. Since 2004,
landslides have forced the relocation of more than 13,000 people in the
county.

Around daybreak on June 22, Lu Youbing awoke to the screams of her
brother-in-law and the sickening sensation of the earth collapsing. Her
mountain farmhouse in Jianmin Village buckled as a landslide swept it
downhill. In all, 20 homes were demolished. Five months later, Lu is
living in a tent, fending off rats and wondering where her family can
go.

"We have nothing left," she said. "Not a single thing."

Winter is approaching, and she is trying to block out cold air  and rats
 by pinning down the tent flaps with rocks. Villagers have been told
that more landslides are possible. Lu lives with her second husband and
their two children. They are too poor to buy an apartment in the city
or to build a new home on higher ground. Local officials gave them the
tent. Villagers have donated clothes.

The tents are pitched on the only available flat land  a terrace with a
monument celebrating efforts by local officials to improve the
environment.

"We don't know about winter," she said. "This is the only option we
have. What else can we do?"