The economic benefits and environmental problems of the Three Gorges Research Paper

The economic benefits and environmental problems of the Three Gorges Dam - Research Paper Example 139). The first suggestion was given by Sun Yat-Sen, who was the president of China in 1919. It was a business vision that was aiming at improving the economy status of China. The river Yangtze was the potential water source for the reservoir since it is 3937 miles with a volume discharge of water of 960 billion cubic meters in the Sea of East China. This river never dries, and it is consistent with the amount of water flowing in it because it gets its water from the ice that covers the mountain range in the South-west, Chongqing (Kammerer 5). More to the economic benefits, the project, was to be built to reduce flood that was occurring at least once in every decade, and its effects were devastating to the Chinese community. The dam was engineered and designed to have three parts: ship lift, ship locks, and the dam. The drive of the dam was to store water thatwas used for hydroelectric harnessing and the ship lift and ship dock was for water vessels navigation to enhance trade to and from Shanghai (Trouw 16). The dam has a height of 600 feet and a width of 1.3 miles. These measurements were large enough to hold large volumes of water during the season when the ice melting realized a lot of water. The bigger the size the efficient it is to reduce water spillage to the land surfaces. It was fitted with twenty-six turbines that were rotated by the flowing water to generated electricity. These stations have the capacity to produce the power equal to eighteen power plants generating the energy from nuclear elements (Spilsbury 30). Five ship locks were constructed for large and heavy ship transportation and a ship lift to lift the small marine vessels over the dam wall of Three Gorges Dam. The construction caused migration of 1.3-1.9 million of people because of the changing water levels in the dam. The resettlement of people was to allow a safe margin of water