Chinese Unleashes Yangtze River on New Dam

Chinese engineers Tuesday blew up a temporary barrier used during construction of the new Three Gorges Dam, unleashing the full force of the Yangtze River upon the world’s largest hydroelectric project. The Three Gorge Dam was completed last month but its power-generation facilities are not slated to be finished until 2008. Officials zapped the water with electric pulses to drive away fish ahead of the blast. Ultrasonic monitoring showed 90 percent of the fish fled. The experts claimed that the water perhaps would rise to 574 feet and it would be hard to predict the exact height because of the silting and the area’s irregular geography. More than 1.13 million people have been relocated to make way for the dam and its reservoir.