The second-highest rainfall that’s swamped China in more than a half-century has fueled new questions about the world’s biggest hydroelectric facility, billed as helping to tame floodwaters. Since last month, at least 141 people have died and around 28,000 homes have been damaged in the Yangtze River region, affecting virtually all of mainland China. Vice Minister of Emergency Management Zheng Guoguang told reporters on Monday that the Yangtze, Asia’s longest river, and parts of its watershed have seen the second-highest rainfall since 1961 over the past six months. But after weeks of devastating flooding, questions are being raised about the Three Gorges Dam’s impact on Yangtze floods and if the massive structure itself may be at risk.
CHINA BRACES FOR MORE STORMS AFTER FLOODS LEAVE 121 DEAD OR MISSING THIS YEAR
“One of the major justifications for the Three Gorges Dam was flood control, but less than 20 years after its completion we have the highest floodwater in recorded history,” David Shankman, a geographer with the University of Alabama who studies Chinese floods, told Reuters. “The fact is that it cannot prevent these severe events.”

The Three Gorges dam is discharging flood. Yichang City, Hubei Province, China, July 2. The dam has come under new scrutiny after devastating flooding over the past few weeks. (Costfoto/Barcroft Media via Getty Images)
The Three Gorges Dam was completed officially in 2006. Its power operation went online in 2012, and it is one of China’s most expensive and questionable developmental projects. Some 1.4 million people had to be resettled as a result of the huge project on the Yangtze River.

In this aerial photo released by Xinhua News Agency, a village is flooded in Sanjiao Township of the Yongxiu County in eastern China’s Jiangxi Province July 13. (Zhang Haobo/Xinhua via AP)
The dam also was touted as the best way to end centuries of flooding along the Yangtze and provide power for China’s industrial boom. But some geologists contended that damming up too much water in the reservoir carried a heightened risk of earthquakes and prolonged damage to the river’s ecology.In 2012, the Ministry of Land Resources said the number of landslides and other disasters around the reservoir had increased 70 percent after the water level in the $23 billion project rose to its maximum in 2010. Critics of the project, like Chinese geologist Fan Xiao, have said that Three Gorges and other major dam projects may make flooding worse by altering the flow of sedimentation down the river. He told Reuters that at Three Gorges, the storage capacity amounts to less than 9 percent of average floodwaters. “It can only partially and temporarily intercept the upstream floods, and is powerless to help with floods caused by heavy rainfall in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River,” he said.Damage from this season’s floods has been estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars, further pressuring an economy deeply impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Hubei province, through which the Yangtze flows, is known for its numerous lakes and rivers and is under particular threat. The province’s capital Wuhan was the epicenter of China’s coronavirus outbreak. On Friday, a resident in Wuhan south of the dam posted a video showing that the Yangtze River was well above average, even though it hadn’t rained recently, the Nikki Asian Review reported. Residents in the Yangtze River basin in recent weeks have expressed concerns over the ability of the massive dam to handle more heavy rain, even though authorities have been releasing floodwater from the structure.
During NASA Langley’s October Colloquium, Allan McDonald, a skilled engineer and executive, who tried to avert the Challenger tragedy from where he stood at the Launch Control Center. As he fought to draw attention to the real reasons behind the disaster, he experienced retribution by individuals from NASA and his employer, Morton Thiokol, Inc., makers of the Shuttle’s solid rocket boosters. McDonald, the director of the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Motor Project for the engineering contractor Morton Thiokol, was concerned that below-freezing temperatures might impact the integrity of the solid rockets’ O-rings. He would soon learn that his worst fears had come true. As he watched the Challenger disintegrate at the Launch Control Center that cold, sunny January morning, he was baffled. He had predicted that if the O-rings were to fail, the rockets would explode
The reason i am telling you all this is because we are about to see another colossal failure. this time in will not affect 6 people or 30,000 or few million but billions. And that is the coronavirus vaccine scam. Go ahead and be stupid. stupid people end up destroying their lives and the fools around them that listen to them! You have been warned!!!!

