Three Gorges Dam
Photograph by Kim Steele/Getty Images
Three Gorges Dam, five times larger than Hoover Dam, was completed in 2006 to much fanfare and a healthy dose of controversy.The project flooded an area stretching 124 miles (200 kilometers)
along the China’s Yangtze River, and inundated one thousand communities. More than one million people were displaced by the dam, but officials believe it will protect 15 million people from often deadly floods while producing power from hydroelectric stations like this one in Hubei Province. Environmentalists lament the dam’s impact on river and delta ecosystems both up and downstream.
