Nearly 1 million residents have been relocated to make way for
the Three Gorges Project, the world's largest reservoir on the
middle reaches of the Yangtze River, an official in charge of the
construction work said in Beijing Friday.
By the end of 2004, more than 980,000 residents had been
relocated from the reservoir area, nearly 82 percent of all the 1.2
million who have to leave their home for the mammoth hydropower and
water-control project, said Pu Haiqing, office manager of the Three
Gorges Project Construction Committee, on the sidelines of the
ongoing Third
Session of the 10th National People's Congress.
Pu said nearly 85 percent of the migrants were from southwestern
Chongqing Municipality and the remaining 15 percent from
neighboring Hubei Province.
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"To date, 160,000 migrants have moved to the booming coastal
regions, including Shanghai and Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces," he
added.
The areas where the residents lived will be flooded to make a
reservoir after the 185-meter dam is completed in 2009.
The gigantic water-control project has produced notable benefits
since it began water storage in 2003, Pu said. "Its combined power
generation capacity may reach 100 billion kilowatt hours instead of
the preset target of 89 billion kilowatt hours."
Eleven generators have been operating at the Three Gorges
hydropower plant since July 10, 2003, when the first generator was
put into operation. The project reported 5.3 billion yuan (US$640
million) of profit in 2004.
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Launched in 1993, the Three Gorges Project is also designed to
control flood on the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze,
China's longest river.
(Xinhua News Agency March 12, 2005)
