The Three Gorges Dam, Yangtze River, China

Three Gorges Dam Statistics:
The world's largest dam, 4 times larger than the Hoover Dam
Height: 185 m (600 feet)
Length: 1.983 km (1.24 miles)
Water Height: 175 m above sea level (570 ft)
Cost: Original estimates in 1990 were US $12 billion, recent estimates put the cost at US $30 billion
Financing: 90% Chinese and 10% foreign investment
Completion date: 2009
Materials used: 10.82 million tons cement, 1.92 million tons rolled steel, 1.6 million cubic meters timber
Reservoir created: 576 km (360 miles) long--the length of Lake Superior
Land submerged: 13 cities, 140 towns, 1,352 villages, 657 factories and approx. 75,000 acres of cultivated land
Re-locations: 12,679 communities totaling 1.3 million people
Building Statistics:
    Phase 1 began in 1994 and ended in 1997 with the initial diversion of the Yangtze     River .
    Phase 2 began in 1998 and is due to end in 2003 when the water level rises to 156     meters (511 feet) and the dam starts generating electricity.
    Phase 3 ended in 2009 when the water level reached 175 meters (574 feet) and     full power generation began.

 (Photo from Christian Science Monitor, Ford)

About the Yangtze River:
The Yangtze River is the longest river in Asia and third longest in the world. The headwaters of the Yangtze are situated at an elevation of about 16,000 feet in the Kunlun Mountains in the southwestern section of Qinghai province. It flows south through Sichuan province into Yuanan then slightly northeast across central China to its mouth, 3,720 miles in total, in the East China Sea north of Shanghai. The river has over 700 tributaries and the surrounding climate ranges from 96 degrees in the summer to cold temperatures in the winter. Precipitation is high due to the mountainous terrain.  Approximately 350 million people are throughout to inhabit inhabit the region of the Yangtze along with a rife variety of wildlife along the river which include the Tibetan antelopes, Mongolian gazelles, and the famous snow leopards. Traditionally, the waters of the Yangtze have been used for rice and wheat irrigation.  However, the creation of the Three Gorges Dam has harnessed the potential energy from the Qutang Gorge, The Wuxia Gorge and the Xiling Gorge.  one of the largest platforms for controversy is the fact that the area is very prone to earthquakes. the dam lies directly on a fault line, leaving it directly vulnerable to amplified natural disasters.  Actually, the plateau and gorges of the Yangtze were created by collision of the Indian-Australian plate with the Eurasian plate, geologic movement which began  well over 40 million years ago and continues modernly.
“Nearly 4,000 miles long, the Yangtze has watered civilizations for millennia—and laid waste to them too. The eighth-century poet Li Bai wrote that navigating the river was ‘even harder than climbing the sky.’ The 20th-century novelist Pearl S. Buck dubbed it ‘the wildest, wickedest river" for its murderous floods.’” (Frail)

Swimming
Great plans are afoot:
A bridge will fly to span the north and south,
Turning a deep chasm into a thoroughfare;
To hold back Wushan's clouds and rain
Till a smooth lake rises in the narrow gorges.
The mountain goddess if she is still there
Will marvel at a world so changed. 

Poem by China's former Communist Leader Mao Tse-tung (PBS)

(Smithsonian)