山峡ダムの環境問題
FTは中国の山峡ダムがこれを維持するだけで環境上の色々な問題を抱えておりこれを政府高官が認めていることを報じている。環境問題の解決なくして中国の経済発展は困難というところまできている。すでに山峡ダムは（ほぼ）完成から15年たっているというが、当初から環境への影響を理由に建設に反対する声は上がっていたが、ダムの建設以外の外部要因でさらに環境問題が悪化しているようだ。
Landslides, silting, and erosion above the dam are creating environmental and safety hazards that cannot be ignored, Wang Xiaofeng, director of the State Council Three Gorges Construction Committee, was quoted as saying. “We cannot exchange environmental destruction for short-term economic gain,” he said.
After 15 years of construction the controversial project has affected a 600km stretch of the country’s largest river, with local officials complaining of increased landslides and a profusion of algal blooms along the length of the reservoir.
The flow of the Yangtze above the dam has been reduced from 2 metres per second to 0.2 m/s, causing the sediment in the river’s famously muddy water to settle on the riverbed. Local governments are faced with huge and growing problems just to keep the dam operational and warn that increased silting could make parts of the river impassable for shipping transport, negating one of the main rationales for the dam in the first place, according to Jean-Louis Chaussade, chief executive of Suez Environment, who met with local officials in recent months.
Unfettered dumping of industrial wastewater and the submergence of numerous toxic factories when the dam was first built have added to the problems of a project that involved the forced relocation of 1.3m people.
