SPACEPHOTOS

This image, acquired on May 21, 2000 shows a 65 km stretch of the Yangtze River in China, including the Wu Gorge, the middle of the three gorges. On the right side of the image is the construction site of the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest. When the reservoir is filled in 2012, water will rise to a height of 175 meters, and extend 600 kilometers. The reservoir will submerge two of the three world-famous gorges, along with irreplaceable cultural and archaeological sites. The project is enormously controversial. Will the dam actually end horrific Yangtze floods such as the three major deluges that killed more than 300,000 people in this century? Will the 1.9 million people being resettled end up with better housing and work opportunities, as the government promises? Or will Three Gorges follow the pattern of earlier Chinese dam projects, in which peasants were uprooted with marginal help and resettlement funds got squandered? Will a tangle of environmental complications result, such as choking siltation that some predict will clog the very ports this project is supposed to enhance? And will heavy upstream pollution concentrate even further into a reservoir of bile as the dam reduces river flow?