Three gorges dam

Essay by nitrorider540Junior High, 7th gradeA-, January 2005

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I do not think The Three Gorges Dam project should be completed for many reasons. One of the reasons is that China will have to relocate three hundred and eighty million people. This is because the proposed 185 meter high and two thousand meter wide dam across the Yangtze river (the 3rd largest river in the world) will cerate a four hundred-mile long man made lake. This puts 150,000 acres under water. Somewhere in these 150,000 acres there are 16 archeological sites that could further explain early man to the world. In addition, 1,500 factories, 320 villages, 140 towns, 1,600 industries, power transmission and communication facilities, harbors, smaller power plants, roads, and pumping stations will be submerged.

The cost of the dam is approximately 32 billion dollars, and the human costs are even greater because they will have to relocate all of those people.

The Canadian International Development Agency says that the dam will do every thing better.

They claim that it will protect millions of people from flooding. They also say it will generate 18,000MW of hydroelectricity for China's electricity shortage. In addition, they say it will make it easier for ships transport goods to up river villages. Environmentalists and scientists do not agree. "By forever changing, the hydrology of the river for thousands of miles, they argue the dam will destroy commercial fish stocks and deprive the complex floodplain agricultural systems of the water and silt they need, threatening the livelihoods of 75 million people who live by fishing or farming along the Yangtze's banks." The dam will also will kill endangered fish, the Chinese alligator, the river dolphin and many other beautiful creatures. The promised flood control of the dam will actually put more people at risk. Another reason I do not think the dam should be...