FENGJIE (CHONGQING), January 20 (Xinhua) -- With the demolition of a group of buildings in an ancient town Sunday afternoon, China began its clean-up of the planned Three Gorges reservoir bed to get it ready for storing water in 2003.
The clean-up is now an urgent task as the Three Gorges project, the largest of its kind in the world, on the Yangtze River is scheduled to begin power generation in 2003.
Beginning in 2003, the reservoir's water level will rise gradually, and in 2009 it will inundate 36,600 hectares of land and 115 towns, where there are 1,300 enterprises, 4,000 hospitals and clinics, 40,000 tombs, 100 bridges, 2.87 million tons of garbage, 15 million tons of discarded solid objects, and buildings with a total floor space of 29 million square meters.
The 600-km-long reservoir will have a surface area of 1,000 sq km. If
the reservoir bed is not cleared up, a Chinese expert said, water in
the reservoir would be polluted by the garbage and discarded objects
from industrial enterprises and homes in the region; navigation and
aquatic production would be affected by the building structures; and
the reservoir area would become a huge ecological bomb
.
Clean-up of the reservoir bottom will be a guarantee for sustained development. Only by protecting the ecological environment of the Three Gorges reservoir, can water resources there be fully used for a long period of time and the Three Gorges project give full play to its comprehensive functions, a water conservation expert said.
The environment of the Three Gorges project is of vital importance to development in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and to economic growth of northern China, as water in the Yangtze River will be diverted to arid north when a water diversion project completes, he added.
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