Reuters AlertNet Lite - Last buildings demolished for Three Gorges reservoir

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Last buildings demolished for Three Gorges reservoir

15 Nov 2007 09:32:29 GMT
Source: Reuters

BEIJING, Nov 15 (Reuters) - The last blocks of flats standing on land to be engulfed by China's vast Three Gorges reservoir were razed on Thursday, with one row going up in smoke at the push of a button.

Thirteen blocks in Kaixian county, under the jurisdiction of Chongqing municipality in the country's southwest, were reduced to rubble within four seconds by 400 kg of dynamite as their former occupiers looked on at a safe distance.

Kaixian was the last of Chongqing's eight counties to complete relocation work for the Three Gorges project. Residents could be seen carting away furniture as late as Wednesday.

A total of 457 households living in Kaixian had been relocated by the end of October.

The Three Gorges Dam lies across the country's longest river, the Yangtze, and when completed will be the world's largest flood control and hydropower station.

Construction began in December 1994, and officials say the final bill will be about $25 billion.

Two cities, 11 counties, 116 towns, and hundreds of cultural sites in Hubei province and Chongqing have been flooded to create the reservoir and about 1.4 million people have been displaced.

The vast scheme is meant to subdue the Yangtze River, but as water levels rise, parts of its shores have strained and cracked, dismaying scientists and officials and alarming villages.

Along the 660-km (410-mile) reservoir, residents pointed to erosion, landslides and deformed terrain they said have seriously worsened since last year, when the water level was raised a second time.

But a high-ranking Chinese official said on Thursday the environmental impact had been less damaging than feared.

"The problems, including landslides, trapped silt and algae blooms, did not go beyond the scope predicted by the feasibility report in 1991, and in some aspects, they are even less severe than predicted," Wang Xiaofeng, director of the office of the Three Gorges Project Committee of the State Council, told Xinhua. (Reporting by Nick Macfie; editing by Roger Crabb)

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Last updated:Thu Nov 15 09:32:07 2007