Along the banks of China’s longest river, the Yangtze, the water is rising. As the river floods, over a million villagers settled in the surrounding valley are being forced to relocate their homes hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of miles away. Yet this is not a natural occurrence, like the Yangtze’s great floods that killed hundreds of thousands in 1931 and 1954. The rising level of the Yangtze, or Chiang Jiang as the Chinese call it, is a deliberate consequence of the Three Gorges Dam Project, one of the largest infrastructure projects ever undertaken. Rising 600 feet into the sky and stretching 1.5 miles across the Yangtze River, the monolithic dam is expected to power 26 turbines and generate 85 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year—the equivalent of 18 nuclear power plants—making it the largest hydroelectric dam in the world. Work on the enormous dam began in 1993 and is expected to be completed in 2009. Four generators are already active, with two more planned by 2004, but this tremendous power comes at a price. The vast Yangtze River Valley, responsible for almost half of China's gross industrial and agricultural output and home to more than a third of its 1.3 billion people, is being transformed forever.

Proponents of the Three Gorges Dam, most notably the Chinese government, claim that, like the Great Wall of China, the Three Gorges will become the Great Dam of China—a symbol of human achievement and a source of national pride. Aside from the symbolic merits of the dam, which would be hard-pressed to justify its US$25 billion pricetag, supporters argue that the dam’s primary benefits will be its vast electricity generation potential and its ability to protect the surrounding regions from the uncontrolled flooding of the Yangtze River, which has claimed more than one million lives in the past century. Furthermore, the dam’s engineers claim that the 350 mile-long reservoir created by the dam will enable large, 10,000-ton ocean-going vessels to travel deep into China’s interior, significantly expanding the commercial potential within China’s industrial and agricultural heartland and transforming the populous inland city of Chongqing into the largest inland seaport in the world. Thus, the dam’s defenders maintain that despite the astronomical costs of the dam, the long-term benefits will more than make up the difference.

Yet not everyone would agree. Ask one of the 1.2 million people, mostly farmers, who are being forcibly relocated from the Yangtze River Valley to towns and cities across China, for their opinion of the Three Gorges Dam, and you are likely to hear a different answer than the official party line. Though resettlement costs comprise nearly 40 percent of the dam’s budget, many of the resettled families still have not received the financial compensation promised by the government to all those affected by the dam, and they continue to struggle with unemployment and the resulting financial strain. While the costs of resettlement may eventually be compensated for, some of the damage can never be undone. The rising waters of the Yangtze have inundated towns and cities and in the process have also submerged more than 1,000 sites containing millennia-old cultural relics. Needless to say, it is unknown how many as yet undiscovered archaeological sites have been lost or destroyed forever.

Perhaps most alarming are the concerns raised by many Chinese environmentalists and scientists regarding the impacts of the dam on the Yangtze River Valley ecosystem. Despite government engineers’ claims to the contrary, many critics argue that damming the silt-laden Yangtze will create a concentrated silt buildup in the reservoir, clogging up the river port of Chongqing and eliminating the commercial benefits of the dam. Furthermore, many scientists believe that reducing the downstream flow of silt and organic materials will damage the river valley’s lush wetland region and prevent minerals from reaching the coast to protect against coastal erosion, thereby harming the lucrative fishing industry in the East China Sea. Finally, environmentalists fear that the more than one billion tons of water waste annually discharged from Chongqing will pollute the Three Gorges Reservoir, created a giant 350-mile long sewer dangerous to both humans and wildlife. Critics also argue that the dam will threaten indigenous species by destroying the river ecosystem, home to rare species like the baiiji, a white-skinned river dolphin found only in the Yangtze.

Today, turning back is not an option. China’s leaders recognize that the dam has been built at a price, but they maintain that sacrifice is necessary for the greater good. As the waters of the Yangtze overflow, swallowing everything in their midst, the world can only look on as the Three Gorges Dam rises and the legendary trio of gorges—its very namesake—is submerged.