The Chinese government had admitted that the dam had increased the probability of earthquakes, landslides, slitting and problems of pollution. What the government did in 2010 was to relocate more people away the dam area and spend $3 billion at the Three Gorges dam to ease the problem of pollution and landslides.
However, critics of the dam insisted that the government did not ease the problem efficiently despite of spending huge amount of money on the dam each year. Many of the critics also predicted that the Three Gorges dam would become a catastrophic environment disaster.
Other than the problems I discussed before: pollution, wildlife disruption, earthquakes and landslides, imbalance of downstream and upstream and relocation of people, the dam would also change the sedimentation to the downstream of the dam. Because of the effect of erosion and siltation, sediments would be decreased to less than 90 Mt/yr in the next decade.
But for such a huge and complex system, it is impossible to decide whether the dam is good or bad in one perspective. It depends on how we plan the future and how we look at the general perspective. Just look at the current status of the dam, it is relatively beneficial because of its efficiency of generating hydroelectric power, waterway control, flood control and urbanization.
In the future, solutions to ecological and environmental problems of the dam will tend to favor in advanced technology and science. However, the Three Gorges dam not only has environmental problems, but also has social and ethnic issues such as the relocation of the local people.
The Chinese government should look at the real cause of the dam. Reducing the possibility of earthquakes and landslides is as important as reducing water and air pollution that the dam has contributed. Yet it is difficult to simply predict whether the future trend will be harmful or beneficial to China.
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Reference:
1.http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=1046&catid=13&subcatid=85
2.http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/13/2253/2009/hess-13-2253-2009.pdf
3.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570644312000512
4.http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1341&context=macintl
5.http://futurepredictions.com/2011/05/future-predictions-china%E2%80%99s-energy-and-carbon-emissions-outlook-to-2050/
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