BEIJING -- Environmentalists are gearing up for an international fight against China's latest megaproject, a mammoth network of dams and canals that will dwarf the controversial Three Gorges project.

China is already boasting that the water diversion scheme will be the biggest hydraulic engineering project in history. At cost of $60-billion (U.S.) over the next 50 years, it will be twice as expensive as the Three Gorges hydroelectric dam.

China argues that the south-to-north diversion is essential to relieve the water shortages in northern cities such as Beijing. But at least 320,000 people will have to be relocated to make room for the new canals and reservoirs, and activists are warning of a long list of environmental risks as a flow of heavily polluted water from the industrial heartland is swept northward.

"This is a project to allow corrupt officials to make a fortune," said Dai Qing, a prominent Chinese environmentalist who has served 10 months in prison because of her opposition to the Three Gorges project.

Chinese officials confirmed yesterday that they will seek financing from commercial banks to help pay for the project.

China has been planning the diversion project for more than half a century, dating back to 1952, just a few years after the Communist victory, when Mao Tsetung first touted the idea.

The project would take water from southern sources, including the heavily polluted Yangtze River, and divert it northward to 39 cities and 245 towns. An ambitious network of canals, tunnels and pumping stations will be built to divert the water, with some canals stretching up to 1,270 kilometres.

Two of the three main routes -- the eastern and central routes -- are under construction. Ceremonies were held in late December to launch the work. The first stages of these two routes could be finished by 2007 and 2010, Chinese officials say.

"We are very happy to see that after 50 years of preparation and survey work, we are now beginning this project," said Zhang Guoliang, project director at China's Water Resource Ministry. "Because of the growing population, the water shortages in the north are becoming very acute."

Western environmental groups are planning a pressure campaign to target any banks or public lending agencies that finance the scheme, just as they fought the Western loans that played a key role in the Three Gorges dam. The Three Gorges project will result in as many as 1.8 million people displaced by the time it is completed in 2009.

"This is a classic megaproject of the type of the 1950s and 1960s," said Patricia Adams, executive director of Probe International, a Toronto-based environmental group that helped lead the battle against Three Gorges. "Just like with the Three Gorges, the Chinese government is using brute force, rather than smart economics. It has the political power to discount the real costs, and it inflicts those costs on individuals."

Canadian agencies, including the Canadian International Development Agency and the Export Development Corporation, could be among the financiers of the project, she said.

Chinese leaders have a "construction mentality" that favours the engineering of massive new projects, rather than cheaper and more effective alternatives, such as water conservation, Ms. Adams said.

Almost all of the current leaders of the Politburo of China's Communist Party are engineers by profession. "The diversion project hasn't received the same level of scrutiny as the Three Gorges," Ms. Adams said.

"Very little environmental assessment has been done so far."

China argues that the project will actually benefit the environment, since the water shortages in the north have led to overexploitation of groundwater and surface water, wetlands degradation, dry-out of lower reaches of the Yellow River, and serious pollution in several shrinking rivers.

By easing the water shortages, the diversion project will lessen the pressure on the environment, Mr. Zhang said. But environmentalists are skeptical.

Dear Guy Stanley, Campaign Update

In less than 400 days, the waters will start rising behind China’s Three Gorges dam, the largest dam ever to be built. Dozens of towns and thousands of cultural treasures will be lost to a watery grave. Millions of Chinese are dreading that day, amid growing concern that the massive dam itself could fail, unleashing a tidal wave that could kill millions downstream.

Cracks in the dam, first discovered in 1999, have multiplied and grown. Some now extend from the top to the bottom of the huge concrete structure. Some are as wide as an adult hand, some run as deep as two metres into the dam. Chinese officials admit there have been concrete pouring problems, prompting the Beijing media to ask: "Can the dam still hold water?"

Engineers fear other forms of failure too. China’s top engineers, who helped design the Three Gorges project, now worry about the new settlements for people displaced by the dam. These new towns have been constructed on mountainous slopes and in geologically unstable areas that could trigger disasters and threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands. The engineers identified 1,320 dangerous sites along the reservoir where landslides could occur and the riverbank could collapse. Already, one landslide of 20 million cubic metres of rock and earth has partially slid down a mountainside, threatening a resettlement town of 10,000 people.

Chinese officials also fear a public health disaster around the Three Gorges reservoir. Some 24 billion tonnes of untreated human and industrial waste are dumped into the Yangtze River every year. As well, thousands of sites contaminated with industrial, radioactive, and biohazardous materials are about to be submerged by the reservoir. Municipal officials, who will have this toxic cocktail as their neighbour, are scrambling to find alternative sources of water.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of displaced people, and their host populations, now face deprivation and chaos – they’re forced to manage with less land, fewer jobs, inadequate housing and basic services such as water, hospitals, and schools. One respected Chinese social scientist has warned that Three Gorges forced migration has sown the seeds of social instability that will last for decades. To make matters worse, corrupt resettlement officials have pocketed funds allocated to these migrants, which were intended to help them rebuild their homes and lives. Four representatives of one community, who appealed to Communist Party officials to redress these wrongs, were convicted of "disturbing public order" and thrown in jail.

For 15 years now, Probe International and our brave colleagues and dedicated experts in China have predicted that the costs of the Three Gorges dam on the Yangtze River would be huge and unpredictable, and that the dam’s benefits would be small and uncertain. Now, 10 years after this project was approved, these predictions are tragically coming true.

The Three Gorges dam was supposed to stop deadly floods in the Yangtze valley. Yet secret correspondence among top Chinese officials responsible for building the dam reveal that "the flood control capacity of the Three Gorges project is smaller than declared by us." But, "never, ever let the public know this," warn the letters, which have been leaked to Probe International.

Dam officials also worry that the dam will cripple shipping along the Yangtze, not facilitate it. And that it will fail to be an energy boon. Our analysis, together with leading Chinese energy sector analysts, reveals that Three Gorges power will be two to three times more expensive than power from high-efficiency gas turbines and cogeneration. Three Gorges power officials, who fear they won’t find customers for their expensive power, are banking on state decrees to force it on unwilling customers.

What can you do at this late date?

Tell the Canadian government that you don’t want to support this dam with your tax dollars. To finish the project, cash-strapped Chinese dam officials continue to ask the Canadian government for financing and the Canadian government continues to give it to them. The Canadian government paid for a dam feasibility study that was flawed, then financed a cement factory for Three Gorges, a computer system to manage construction of the dam, turbines and generators and, recently, a bridge across the Yangtze needed for dam construction. But, when it comes to defending the fundamental rights of Chinese citizens who are threatened by this dam, the Canadian government remains mute.

Please let your elected representative know that draping the Canadian flag over the Three Gorges dam violates the values that Canadians hold dear.

And, please, support us with a generous donation to help us in our work to expose the truth about the dam. We must do all we can to stop further tragedies caused by the Three Gorges dam, and to protect future generations from a repetition of this profoundly damaging project.

Yours sincerely,

Patricia Adams
Executive Director

P.S. The Three Gorges Probe news service is now receiving an astounding 4,000 hits a day, and reaching Chinese citizens with the truth about the dam.

see also: wn Water | CNN China's Three Gorges Dam | China & Water | Wikipedia Three Gorges Dam Environment Links