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Does Xiaolangdi Dam, one of China's largest, solve more problems than it creates? Still not quite finished, this dam for flood control and electricity generation on the Yellow River is the biggest single project ever supported by the World Bank. It displaced about 175,000 people, cost upward of US $4 billion to build, and is important for cutting production of greenhouse gases in China. (The much larger Three Gorges Dam is at a much earlier stage of construction.)
IEEE Spectrum Editor Bill Sweet visited the Xiaolangdi to see for himself the effects of the dam. Some predicted the dam would leave peple homeless, jobless, and vulnerable to disease. The police, he was warned, would prevent him from reaching the dam.
Sweet's experience was almost hilariously at variance with expectations. The dam, it turned out, is a major Chinese tourist attraction, with tour buses running there regularly from the nearest city. He had no trouble moving about the area, visiting towns built to resettle people from the dam's reservoir area, and observing the good will the local people seemed to feel for their dam. Sweet also discusses how the dam may affect the countryside in the long run.
Contact: William Sweet, 212 419 7559, [email protected].
For faxed copies of the complete article ("China's Big Dams" by William Sweet, Senior Editor, IEEE Spectrum, pp. 46-51) or to arrange an interview, contact: Nancy T. Hantman, 212 419 7561, [email protected].
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