China Earthquake Threatens Nearby Dams, Environment (UPDATED)
by Alex Pasternack, Beijing, China on 05.14.08
UPDATE: The extensive damage done to dams by the earthquake, some have speculated, may lead the government to strengthen its review process for dam building. Meanwhile, concerns that dams may be responsible for seismic activity, persist. See this LA Times story.
A "quake lake," formed by a dam caused by a landslide, has led to the relocation of thousands, who fear that a burst would destroy their crops and their homes. Soldiers with heavy machinery are trying to divert the water.
The human impact of China's most devastating natural disaster in three decades, which is estimated to have claimed at least 12,000 lives, may not be fully known for weeks. Thankfully, no damage has been reported at the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest, situated some 700 km east of the epicenter (map here). If the quake had affected the dam, the human toll would be even harder to imagine.
The dam sits above some 15 million people (some of whom are already suffering from soil erosion that can lead to landslides). Last September, government officials joined the dam's critics in raising the alarm about potential dangers, among them that the dam itself could trigger quakes as it sits near a number of fault lines. A burst at the Three Gorges, says engineer Philip Bosshard, former president of the San Francisco-based International Rivers Network, would “rank as one of history’s worst man-made disasters.”
The Three Gorges may be fine, but near Dujiangyan, where some of the greatest loss of life occurred, a number of dams and the surrounding areas are at risk.
While there is no official word yet on the status of those dams, a friend, who met today with researcher-activist Yu Xiaogang, said that at least one of the dams near Dujiangyan has likely cracked. Update: 2000 soldiers have been sent to repair "extremely dangerous" cracks in a dam upstream of Dujiangyan, which "would be swamped" if the dam were breached. The NYT reports that 400 dams have been damaged.
According to Xinhua, Sichuan officials said on Tuesday that "cracks had appeared on the surface of the dam at the Zipingpu [reservoir] and workshops collapsed, while all hydropower generators came to a halt." A command center has been set up at Zipingpu to safely discharge the reservoir's rising waters and ensure that the damage posed no threat to Dujiangyan and the neighboring Chengdu Plain.
Also, from Reuters: "Upstream on the Min river is an important reservoir called Tulong which is already imperilled. If the danger intensifies, this could affect some power stations downstream," He Biao, deputy party chief of Aba prefecture, told reporters. "This is an extremely dangerous situation."
Peter Hessler reminds us at the New Yorker that the damage could have been much worse had an enormous dam project nearby not been canceled in 2003, amidst concerns by the local seismological bureau and complaints of local citizens.End update
Also slightly damaged is a different kind of earth-changing project: the stunning, 2000 year old Dujiangyan Irrigation System, a UNESCO World Heritage site that is the world's oldest and only surviving no-dam irrigation system. This could put a very large area of agricultural land at risk. (Also damaged in the city of Shifang were two chemical plants, burying 100 workers and causing a leak of liquid ammonia. The epicenter of the quake was near the world famous Wolong Panda Reserve, but the pandas are reportedly safe.)
Though modern dams, like nuclear reactors, are built to higher earthquake standards than most buildings, standards are not met or cannot always be met in rural China. The town of Dujiangyan has learned this tragically: 900 children were trapped beneath a collapsed school building built just 10 years ago, while older buildings nearby remained standing.
Even if the building had been built to earthquake standards, that may not have been enough: ranking a 10 or 11 on the Mercalli intensity scale, the quake exceeded expectations for local seismic activity by a third.
Though Monday's disastrous earthquake was a result of tectonic collision, there are fears that the Three Gorges Dam could trigger earthquakes on its own. Its reservoir sits on two major faults, which can be aggravated by changes in water level, and recently relocated residents have reported landslides, mudslides and ominous cracks in the ground. According to a March 2008 article in Scientific American by Mara Hvistendahl,
Engineers in China blame dams for at least 19 earthquakes over the past five decades, ranging from small tremors to one near Guangdong province's Xinfengjiang Dam in 1962 that registered magnitude 6.1 on the Richter scale—severe enough to topple houses.
Surveys show that the Three Gorges region may be next. Chinese Academy of Engineering scholar Li Wangping reports on the CTGPC's Web site that the area registered 822 tremors in the seven months after the September 2006 reservoir-level increase.
Meanwhile, upstream from the Three Gorges along the Jinsha river, a section of the Yangtze, at least a dozen new dams are being built in order to alleviate sedimentation caused by the Three Gorges reservoir. They too lie in the same seismic region as Monday's earthquake. As a geologist told the Guardian in 2003 of the area, "The Jinsha has bad geological conditions, and there is a more severe seismic area upriver from Xiangjiaba [the site of the furthest downstream of the four dams]." Near this site dam projects "should not be encouraged," he said.
A side note: the response to this earthquake reminds us again that tides are shifting in China, as they must, towards more transparency and government responsiveness. The response by citizens illustrates just how powerful and important the internet can be in a country where information is often scarce. And the reaction by government officials like premier Wen Jiabao, who is also a trained geologist, points to growing concerns about how the government responds to natural and man-made environmental disasters.
To donate to the Chinese Red Cross, go here or check out The Beijinger for more options.
...will we ever learn...?
:/
wouldent it be the biggest slice of irony if the greatest dam ever built, and mans supposed mastery over nature would be undone. i think thats what it would take for people to realize natures in charge, always has, alsways will
I was wondering if the enormous water mass gathered behind the three gorges dam could have been a (partial) cause of the earthquake. I have googled, but could not find any info on this subject.
I wonder if the collapse of the three gorges damn would be what the Yangtze river dolphin needs to be removed from the "functionally extinct" list. Though sadly if its not already extinct it would take more than the damn collapse to save them.
One can only assume the dam was not damaged. With such mass it would be impossible to check every square inch of it in just the few days since the quake. Additionally there may be damage to the underlying earth that is impossible to see. This dam was an ecological nightmare from the beginning. True, it ended flooding downstream and gave China a good source of "green" energy but the complete ramifications of its construction will not be discovered until it is too late I fear.
Chris is right...nature is much too complex and large for us to ever master. We can merely tilt daggers against an enormous beast that can never be tamed and simply imagine ourselves more powerful than we actually are.
its very tragic that refugees in the three gorges flood plain,
had to move and demolish their homes, only to be evacuated to chongqing where an earthquake would then again demolish their new homes
I've been thinking the same, Frans.
It just seemed obvious to me (and I'm not educated on the subject) that when you build a massive dam like that over an earth-plate that the weight of the water & structure is going to be moving that plate, cause imbalance & instability of all sorts.
Just open google earth & look at the area. There are massive visible earth-plates that they're messing with. And if you turn on the google earth "seismic details" it shows an insane amount of quakes, all strangely around construction periods of their dams.
I just hope they can repair whatever damage there is to all the dams in time to save the people living below.
Is there anybody take care of victim?
Is there anybody talk about how to save victim?
Many people expressed the feeling that it was so “cool” that Chinese people were dying in the earthquake .
Many people expressed the feeling that it was so “merited” that Chinese people were dying in the earthquake .
This article is not impersonal.
so many people are suffering from losing their family and friends, but you guys just made some shit here.
we don't expect your help and compassionation. but please keep your mouth shut and show your respect to the victims.
Dam ... the landslides of rock and soil on an earth tremor are likely at any time anywhere and more likely the earth motion and seismic activity affects the dam unless well built rather than the other way around ... without the dam there is always sediment, landslip etc and plate shift and montane building events are normal practice for earth ... dams actually reduce erosion in some states ... we just have to build carefully when we build for need for people so the structure reacts well, New Zealand plane section as per Swiss Engineering designers for the south Island ... if people keep moving en masse into delta and mountain areas there will be failures ... these need to be kept to a minimum influence on the social aspects ... but there are always some people about who try to make political Capital out of normal events for their own purposes ... as indicated in those posts. If you want an effective social landslip stand on a scree and watch yourself disappear into an ambulance, if there is one nearby just for you, China has a mass problem that is exacerbated by its soils, montane land and erosion history which they are trying to resolve as best able. The earth slips U.C.W., even our Hall of Residence and Northern Italy, or Calabria (Kirkby Kirkby Brunsden). 1966 Professor C Kidson.
You guys are not familiar with China and Chinese people! When three gorge was not bulit. there are nearly flood every year. Have you consider the loss? What is the cause of the earthquake? All is prediction.
We need to build things like this dam because of glabal industrilization. We just need to build them right... and hopefully they did.
I can't believe all the tree huggers (most in their cosy A/C homes and driving cars)... first they don't want nuclear power (so now we're dependent on oil), then they get mad because the wind turbines are killing birds, and now we can't even build a damn dam.
I am a firm believer in nuclear power (we can use the oil to rocket the nuclear waste into the sun).
I feel wind power is a waste of space and looks ugly.
Solar power is the ultimate source of energy (put it in the desert... along with the nukes).
Three Gorges may be too big, but I beleive in using dams to control flooding and make electricity is a very good plan.
Is there an attribution to the photograph used at the top?
No doubt the three gorges dam play some part in causing the earth quake.
That huge weight of the water pressing on the earth where there was no weight before definitly would cause the earth to shift !
The Chinese economy is out of control and will control the world in 20 years.