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Three Gorges Dam presents new opportunities, challenges for southwestern China's largest industrial city

By Jack Souther At one end of the world’s largest man-made lake the Three Gorges Dam holds back the water of the Yangtze, and at the other end the city of Chongqing stands poised to use the new shipping corridor and cheap hydropower to boost its econ

By Jack Souther

At one end of the world’s largest man-made lake the Three Gorges Dam holds back the water of the Yangtze, and at the other end the city of Chongqing stands poised to use the new shipping corridor and cheap hydropower to boost its economic growth.

With a population of 30 million people, more than half of them living within the city core, Chongqing is already bigger than either Shanghai or Beijing. It is the second largest producer of cars and motorbikes in the country and by far the most industrialized city in southwestern China. Yet both its population and its industry continue to grow.

On the final day of our cruise up the Yangtze the dramatic scenery of the Three Gorges is just a memory. As we approach Chongqing, a perpetual haze hangs over the landscape. New communities where displaced people have been relocated are larger and more numerous, and their clusters of square white apartment blocks are interspersed with factories and warehouses. Coal barges and small freighters scuttle up and down the river. The waterfront is teeming with activity — workboats, dredges, and local passenger ferries compete for dock space. And then we get our first glimpse of Chongqing.

Above the waterfront the ghostly outline of closely packed skyscrapers fades upward into the gray gloom of enveloping smog. Many buildings are topped by construction cranes, the ubiquitous symbol of China's burgeoning urban expansion. Our ship is greeted at the dock by a crew of porters who carry luggage and gear ashore. Using baskets hung from the ends of a bamboo pole slung over a shoulder each man carries an astonishing load. As we climb the long series of stairs leading up to the vehicle landing we are told to ignore the beggars, some with hideous deformities. They are beyond our power to help. But it is impossible to ignore the persistent street hawkers with their tourist maps and trinkets who hassle us every step of the way.

We are met by Johnson, our local guide, who congratulates us on choosing to visit his city on such a nice day. And I wonder if he has ever seen a truly clear blue sky — the kind we take for granted back home in Whistler. Hanson pays the porters and we set off on an obligatory visit to Erling Park. The road is a crush of cars and sputtering motorbikes and Johnson explains why there are no bicycles. "The streets of Chongqing," he tells us "are much too steep for bicycles." Clinging to a steep hillside the various levels of the city are connected by stone stairways — and porters, who can be hired to carry everything from the day's groceries to major appliances. They are a vital part of the city's infrastructure and the daily lives of many apartment dwellers. Even some new apartments have no elevators below the seventh floor and older ones have no elevators at all, ensuring a steady demand for the strong backs and bamboo poles of the porters.

Erling Park is home to a rare Siberian tiger that paces tirelessly back and forth in its enclosure. There are also caged birds and some giant pandas that munch on bundles of bamboo shoots while human picnickers snack at nearby tables. The crowds of visitors who have come to enjoy the park's beautifully landscaped grounds seem oblivious to the lung-searing air that envelops their city. I ask Johnson if electricity from the new Three Gorges Dam will replace enough of the coal-fired generators and factory furnaces to improve the quality of Chongqing's air. "Not only that," he answers enthusiastically, "the deep water reservoir and new ship-locks allow bigger boats to come all the way from Shanghai. This will have a good effect on Chongqing's economy and bring more tourists."

It wasn't the answer I had hoped for but it shouldn't have come as a surprise. The new Three Gorges Dam is a feat of modern engineering that rivals the building of the Great Wall. It is a source of immense national pride and, after the staggering economic cost and social disruption its building has entailed, Johnson and most of his countrymen have great expectations for its future and are reluctant to acknowledge any problems. But others, both Chinese and international scientists, are concerned that things could still go terribly wrong.

With Chongoing, an industrial city of 30 million people, sitting at its top end and countless factories and smaller cities scattered along its shores, some critics predict that the Three Gorges Reservoir is destined to become the world's biggest cesspool. Without the scouring and aerating action of the river's natural current they argue that silt, domestic waste, and industrial sludge will settle out, accumulate in the reservoir, and foul the water. To avoid an environmental disaster the government has belatedly started building garbage- and water-treatment plants but as recently as 2005 an estimated 80 per cent of Chongqing's waste flows into the Yangtze untreated. And almost all of the 30,000 boats operating on the reservoir dump their waste straight into the water.

During the few hours we spent in Chongqing I was dismayed at the apparent disconnect between the city and its environment. Apartment blocks and new skyscrapers are going up where people are already packed into a depressingly dense urban space. The anticipated commercial spin-off from the new Three Gorges Dam seems to have trumped the plight of the river on which its very existence depends. I joined Hanson for coffee in the downtown KFC and we talked about the enormous environmental price that China is paying for its decade of rapid development. "The government has finally acknowledged there is a problem" he says, "and it's starting to take some steps to clean things up." He is optimistic that the pollution problem will be solved but acknowledges it will take time.

In response to deforestation, over-cultivation, and changing weather patterns the river itself is becoming increasingly unpredictable. In the past the forest and top soil in its vast watershed acted as a buffer, absorbing the monsoon rains and releasing the water slowly over a period of months. Now, with 85 per cent of the forest cover gone there is little to hold the water. The rain produces flash-floods, causing more erosion and flushing more silt into the reservoir. To protect both the reservoir and the dam's turbines from sedimentation the Chinese engineers propose to "store clear water and discharge muddy water." Whether this can be done without compromising power generation and downstream flood control remains to be seen. Ironically, as the Three Gorges Dam nears completion, the monsoon rains and seasonal floods it was designed to control have failed to materialize. In the worst drought ever recorded water levels in the Yangtze this season were so low that some boats could barely make it up to the new ship-locks and into the reservoir behind the dam, and 1.5 million of Chongqing's residents are facing a shortage of water.

It took us almost two hours to drive the 30 kilometres from downtown Chongqing to the airport and as we sat idling in gridlocked traffic I wondered whether China's new concern for the environment was not already too little and too late to rescue the once mighty Yangtze River.