As central China struggles through its worst flooding in more than a decade, the giant Three Gorges Dam is once again being singled out for criticism after it failed to prevent the disaster.
While heavy rain downstream, overbuilding and poor drainage have contributed to flooding around the city of Wuhan, social media has lit up in recent days with criticism of China’s most storied engineering project.
Some of the loudest online voices have noted how the state media has consistently dialled back the dam’s flood mitigation capability.
In 2003, the year it opened, it was said the Three Gorges could prevent the worst flood in 10,000 years. By 2007 it was only capable of stopping the worst in a thousand years and then the worst in a century.
Now the state broadcaster CCTV is saying; “We should not put all our hopes on the Three Gorges dam”.
Given flood mitigation was the main reason cited by former premier Li Peng for building the dam, its inability to prevent major flooding is proving an embarrassment for the Communist Party.
Not that the state media has reported the criticism, preferring instead to focus on the rescue efforts.
“The flood prevention capability of the dam was always over-hyped,” said Ma Yun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in an interview via phone.
“Year by year we have gradually faced the truth that this one dam could not solve all the [flooding] problems.”
Mr Ma said water experts always knew this was the case, but their voices were ignored by government officials and the state media in an effort to have the dam built.
As the death toll from the latest flooding along the Yangtze River moves above 160 people, the debate has re-opened about the environmental, social and financial cost of the project.
According to the China National Audit Office, the dam with its wall rising 181 metres high and associated works, cost 208 billion yuan ($41 billion).
It displaced 1.3 million people from their homes, caused major losses to already depleted biodiversity stocks and has been blamed for more frequent landslides and even causing earthquakes.
He Weifang, a law professor at Peking University, said the dam had delivered the worst of all conditions to those living below its wall.
“When farmers downstream are suffering from drought the dam holds water for power generation and when they are suffering from floods it releases water,” he said on social media service WeChat.
For Mr Ma, the issue is that the alternatives to building the dam were never fully explored. These included smaller dams upstream, relocating villages built on flood plains and ecological solutions like reafforestation.
“Not all voices were heard,” he said.
That’s largely because the loudest voice in favour of the dam was former premier Li, who admitted in his memoirs, to being obsessed with the project.
He consistently brushed aside criticism, even after a third of delegates to the 1992 National People’s Congress, which is often derided as a rubber stamp parliament, abstained or voted against the dam’s construction.
In advocating for the dam, premier Li also pledged it would stop future flooding in Wuhan, which sits on the banks of the Yangtze.
Pictures from the city this week showed impassable roads, flooded subway stations and a football stadium which resembled a bath tub.
