Three Gorges Dam Reaches Full Capacity

A Century-Long Dream

The idea of damming the Yangtze at the Three Gorges had been proposed as early as the 1910s. Sun Yat-sen advocated it, and Mao Zedong wrote a famous poem about it. Construction began in 1994 after decades of debate and feasibility study. The project required relocating 1.3 million people from 13 cities, 140 towns, and 1,350 villages submerged by the rising reservoir. The main dam structure was completed in May 2006 and the reservoir reached its designed level of 175 metres in 2010.

Engineering Achievement and Criticism

At 2,335 metres long and 185 metres high, the Three Gorges Dam is the world's largest hydropower facility, with a generating capacity of 22,500 megawatts — equivalent to 15 nuclear power plants. It also provides flood control for the middle and lower Yangtze, a historically flood-prone region. Critics, however, documented massive forced displacement often with inadequate compensation, the irreversible loss of archaeological and natural heritage, increased landslide risk along the reservoir banks, and disruption of the Yangtze ecosystem including the near-extinction of the Yangtze river dolphin.

Environmental Consequences

The dam has been linked to increased seismic activity in the reservoir area, as the weight of water causes geological stress. The reservoir's slow-flowing waters accumulate agricultural and industrial pollutants. Reduced sediment flow downstream has accelerated coastal erosion at the Yangtze Delta. The Yangtze finless porpoise and Chinese sturgeon have been pushed further toward extinction. In 2020, severe flooding in the Yangtze basin raised questions about the dam's flood-control effectiveness under climate change conditions.