Since the beginning of June, heavy rains have been reported in regions of southern China. As a power plant in the upper stream of the Three Gorges Reservoir was damaged by a flash flood and mudslide, concerns over the safety of the Three Gorges Reservoir were brought up again. On June 21, the CCTV Economy channel reported that the water level in the Three Gorges Reservoir rose to 147 meters (482 feet) which exceeded the flood control limit by about 2 meters (6.56 feet). On June 11, the Ministry of Water Resources held a press conference and stated that China has entered the flood season and there are a total of 148 rivers in the country that exceed the flood warning level. In the early morning on June 17, heavy rain upstream of the Three Gorges Dam damaged a power plant in Damba County of Ganzi, Sichuan province and resulted in a mudslide. A video posted on twitter showed the flood water and mudslide wiped out the villages along the way. Meanwhile people re-tweeted a warning from a licensed structural engineer telling the people in the Lower Yangtze River region to escape.
Wang Weiluo, a specialist on the safety of Three Gorges Reservoir and currently residing in Germany told Epoch Times that heavy rain in the Three Gorges region caused a flash flood and a mudslide. It will be disastrous if the reservoir collapses at the lower Yangtze because it is a high density populated area. Wang said that the Three Gorges Reservoir shouldn’t have been started in the first place. Many people opposed the idea. One famous irrigationist wrote three letters to Jiang Zemin, then the head of the CCP, warning of the potential risk of the project and predicting that, if the reservoir were to be built, it would be demolished in the end. Jiang and Li Peng, then Prime Minister, still went ahead with the project. The three Gorges Reservoir project started in 1994 and was completed in 2009.
Source: Epoch Times, June 21, 2020
https://www.epochtimes.com/b5/20/6/21/n12201515.htm