Dam nation: China crackdown spares big state hydropower projects

In a mountain village in southwest China’s Sichuan province, authorities have demolished seven small dam projects along a single river this year in an attempt to clear illegal developments in a new nature reserve. The demolition is part of a nationwide programme to close hundreds of tiny and often ramshackle dams and turbines, and bring order to China’s massive hydropower sector after years of unconstrained construction.

The dams sat on an unnamed tributary of the fierce and flood-prone Dadu river, which feeds into the Yangtze, Asia’s largest and longest river, where the government says the “irregular development” of thousands of small hydropower projects has wrecked the ecology. But green groups say the campaign will not necessarily save the environment because it will not affect big state hydropower stations, which they say have caused the most damage.

On the Zhougong river, another tributary, 70-year-old farmer Zhang, who declines to give his full name, reckons big dams have devastated the ecology. Zhang describes himself as a “hydropower migrant” after his land was inundated by state dam builders 10 years ago.

He says changes in the Zhougong’s flow and temperature have devastated the local fish population, with one species favoured by China’s revered late leader Deng Xiaoping, who was born in Sichuan, now wiped out.

“The fish here now taste terrible and are fit only for dogs,” Zhang says, pointing to three silver carp he caught after they were swept down river by floodwaters from an upstream reservoir.

China triggered an aggressive damming programme 20 years ago as it looked for ways to develop industry and bring electricity to poor rural regions not connected to the power grid. Investors rushed in and environmentalists likened the frenzy to the construction of backyard steel smelters during the ill-fated Great Leap Forward (1958-62), a Mao Zedong-led programme that aimed to industrialise China’s agrarian society but instead caused widespread famine as farmers made metal instead of food.