China - Yangtze River (Three Gorges Dam)

Our final stop on the Yangtze was the Three Gorges Dam. We all know about this huge project to dam the Yangtze, but here are some intersting facts about it:
1. When complete, it will be able to power a city 4x larger than L.A. (about 3% of China's energy needs)
2. It is the largest dam in the world - 5x larger than Hoover Dam
3. It officially cost $25 billion US, but has been estimated at over $100 billion US
4. Millions of residents in the flooded area were forced to move into government housing - often to new land of much poorer quality
5. The building of the dam will negatively affect the environments of several endagered species (Chinese river dolphin, Chinese paddlefish and Siberian Crane)
6. An estimated 1300 archeological sites will be flooded by the time the water has fully risen in 2009.

Here is some of what we saw there:

We went through the locks at around 1am. I got up to check it out, but quickly grew bored/tired after it took 40+ minutes to go through one lock (it takes over 4 hours to go through the 5 locks).

The next day we got a tour of the grounds. Here's a view inside the last lock.

They made a park at the dam site... but there wasn't much there - except for tourists.

The dam. The last piece of structural work was completed less than a month before we got there (9 months ahead of schedule).

Fishermen at the foot of the dam.