53,000 people to move from dam area (China)

China Daily ^ | 4.11.03

[Enemy Of The State]

53,000 people to move from dam area

The Chinese Government plans to move 53,000 residents from the Three Gorges Dam area this year.

That's according to the Three Gorges Project Construction Committee under the State Council.

Most of the 53,000 are rural residents, 3,000 of whom live in Central China's Hubei Province, and the rest in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, said Wang Kefu, an official with the construction committee who is in charge of the project's resettlement programme.

The Three Gorges Project, which will result in the world's largest hydropower station,will take up 632 square kilometres of land. About 1.17 million residents will have to leave their homes and 125,000 of them will have to move out of the Three Gorges Dam area. Among them, 53,000 residents will resettle in provinces along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and in well-off coastal provinces in East China, Wang said.

Groups of delegates selected from the people that will be moved have visited the areas where they will live, and new housing has been under construction there since March this year, he added.

"The migrants are expected to settle into new homes by the end of August, so that children can start school in the new term and adults can start growing winter crops," Wang said.

The resettled people will get farmland as soon as they have moved in, he noted.

The Chinese Government originally planned to resettle all residents of the submerged land within the dam area but the worsening environment there led to a change of policy in 1999.

The Three Gorges Dam area suffers from severe soil erosion, with 40 million tons of sand and soil washed into the Yangtze River annually.

The government started to plant more forests and grassland in the area three years ago in a bid to curb the erosion, meaning there is not much farmland available for new residents.

"That is why we are planning to move these residents to provinces that have ample farmland and a better economic environment," Wang said.

[Enemy Of The State]

""That is why we are planning to move these residents to provinces that have ample farmland and a better economic environment," Wang said."

However, Wang failed to mention the fact that the Govt. has failed to sufficiently relocate the majority of these citizens to adequate housing. Most have been left homeless.

[JohnnyZ]

OMG! They're really going to flood the whole dam area? There's not enough dam time to get all the pre-dam pictures.

Sorry, all this dam flooding has got me bent out of shape.