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Guan Ping
Guest
'Mountains' of rubbish hauled out of China's Three Gorges Dam
Workers in central China have fished 3,800 tonnes of rubbish out of the Three Gorges Dam in just six days, as the mounting rubbish threatened to block up the world's largest dam.
Published: 7:00AM GMT 04 Nov 2010
A two-foot thick layer of rubbish covering an area of more than 12 acres began to form in front of the dam when the rainy season started in early July Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The clean-up process, which began on October 26 when the water level in the dam's reservoir hit its maximum capacity, involved 100 people and 15 boats daily, the China Daily quoted Wang Yafei, head of the operation, as saying.
Over six days, the workers in Hubei province pulled out more than 600 tonnes of rubbish each day, which consisted mainly of tree trunks, branches and straw, the report said. Household garbage is also a problem, as more than 150 million people live upstream from the dam, and rubbish is sometimes dumped directly into the Yangtze river because nearby municipalities are unequipped for waste disposal.
China considers the $22bn Three Gorges Dam a modern wonder. Since its completion in 2008, it has pumped out much-needed hydroelectricity, increased shipping on the Yangtze and helped reduce flooding. The piles of rubbish was threatening the operation of the dam's 26 power generators, the report said.
"All of the salvaged garbage will be disposed of in an environmentally friendly way. There will be no disposal in rivers and nearby places," Wang was quoted as saying. In August, heavy rains and floods in the area had washed a lot of rubbish into the Yangtze, China's longest waterway, causing concern as it created a pile-up threatening to block the dam.
The garbage was so thick in parts of the river that people could walk on the surface, state media reported at the time. Chen Lei, an official with the China Three Gorges Corporation, said in August up to seven million cubic feet of garbage - the equivalent of 80 Olympic-sized pools - is collected from the dam every year.
