Some info I've come across that I found interesting:
The dam is being built on an earthquake fault.
The Gorges have a long history of enormous landslides that cause massive waves.
The resulting reservoir will flood 13 cities, 140 towns, and 1,352 villages; it will swamp 650 factories and 139 power stations.
Over 350 million people live in the Yangze watershed and over 2 million will be displaced.
3200 Chinese dams have burst since 1949. The Chinese dam failure rate is 3.7% vs. 0.6% for the rest of the world.
The advantages that are discussed are electricity, flood control, and transportation.
The dam will create enough electricity to replace the burning of 50 million tons of coal/year. The dam's 26 massive turbines will produce the equivalent of 10 nuclear reactors, enough energy to boost China's national output by 10%.
The Three Gorges Dam as a topic has been banned from public debate since 1987.
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