As well as being the world’s largest dam, China’s magnificent Three Gorges Dam also appears to be functioning as the world’s largest garbage strainer.
Torrential rains have seen the dam discharging record amounts of water, estimated at 70,000 cubic metres a second.
However, rains have also washed record amounts of rubbish into the dam, threatening to impede its operation unless authorities can remove the tons of garbage now collecting there (admittedly the fault of floods and Chinese attitudes to waste management rather than anything to do with the dam itself).
Aside from the dam’s unintended rubbish collecting abilities, its environmental impact is generally thought to have been highly favourable – the power it provides is said to have replaced the burning of millions of tons of coal and allowed increased river traffic.
oh goodies! more material for bridges.
This is China! They should have a garburating function on the dam.
At least all that trash did get out in the ocean. But damn, all that trash! That water has got to be very scummy.
Well, at least it’s trash that’s wasted, and probably will be somehow collected.
In the glorious USA’s oil spilling, on another hand..
I’m sorry, where is this “USA” oil spilling located? If you talking about the off shore oil rig spill in the Gulf of Mexico then your source of information or your understanding is quite limited. BP or Beyond Petroleum is a “British” company which was used to be called “British Petroleum.” Please, pick up a newspaper that is something worth the time and not ones that are always putting blame on US or are you just a glorious idiot?
Fun fact, just because a company originates in one country doesn’t mean that all of it’s operations are undertaken in the name of said country. BP is a multinational corporation, and it’s american arm is staffed by americans. Ergo, the drilling plan, created by americans, as well as the maintenance issues and negligence, attributable to americans, and the non-existent inspections, also american, sum up to american fault. As well, the laws [of america] that allowed offshore drilling [in america] were deficient [crafted by americans]. You’re trying to push blame around, but you have nothing to stand on.
I’ll have you know that blaming the US for ecological tragedies that are a foreign country’s fault is a decidedly unpleasant faux-pas. Read a newspaper or something.
This reminds me of one of the more recent chapters of one piece. There was a massive collection of trash outside the walls of a city near Luffy and Ace’s general area of living when they were kids. Perhapse various parts of China and this filthy dam were the inspiration for the setting in that perticualar story arc.