Old notes:
At about 12:30 a.m. on July 26, a mudflow disaster occurred at the construction site of a hydropower station on the Migu River in Migu Village, Pula Di Township, Gongshan County, killing 11 people. The Ministry of Water Resources of China then issued a special emergency notice, requiring that safety measures for flood season be effectively strengthened at all water conservancy and hydropower projects under construction.
On August 18, a mudflow suddenly struck Pula Township, Gongshan County, Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture, and the village was suspected to have suffered a catastrophe of total destruction. CCTV footage: “A ferroalloy plant was completely buried by the mudflow.”
The so-called experts said that mudflows are natural disasters and have nothing to do with human engineering activities.
How many more times are we supposed to mourn? No one needs to reflect, because after all it was purely a natural disaster; if you run into it, that’s just bad luck. It has nothing to do with people, so a little mourning is enough.
http://www.nujiang.ngo.cn/Dynamics/20085e74/20085e7436708/75357ad9608452a85de5-60126c5f518d544a6025/
Power Plant Quietly Begins Construction / Nujiang Again in Crisis
by slylinda — Last modified: 2008-03-17 17:34
Source: Nanfang Metropolis Daily, 2008-03-17, Lu Bin
http://www.nanfangdaily.com.cn/southnews/jwxy/200803170026.asp
●Liku Hydropower Station, the first step in the grand development of large hydropower on the Nujiang, has quietly begun resettling residents and started construction without the state having formally approved it yet
●Dozens of small hydropower stations have already been generating electricity in trial operation, hemming in the Nujiang Gorge
●Counselors to the State Council visited Nujiang and questioned its hydropower development
After having run freely for millions of years, the Nujiang will be cut off at the waist by a dam. Liku Hydropower Station has quietly begun resettling residents and started construction without a basin-wide integrated plan or environmental impact assessment, without a resettlement plan being reviewed, and without formal state approval. And this is only the first step in the “two reservoirs, thirteen stages” grand hydropower development of the Nujiang.
Xiaoshaba Village, north of the urban area of Liku on the left bank of the Nujiang, has already become a ruin. More than 100 households have been relocated to the “new village” downstream. At present, 200 to 300 workers are laying embankments along the river and building a slag dump, with completion planned before April this year. At the same time, a road 3.56 kilometers long is about to begin construction; once completed, it will mainly serve the Liku Hydropower Station.
With the start of construction at Liku Hydropower Station, the fiercest clash in the history of China’s environmental protection movement has entered a white-hot stage.
The promise of hydropower development has attracted energy-intensive industries
On February 21, 21 environmental NGOs jointly called in Beijing for relevant departments to publicize information related to the environmental impact assessment report on Nujiang hydropower development and to make decisions that can withstand the test of history.
Immediately afterward, Professor Liu Shukun, chief engineer of the Hydraulics Institute of the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, wrote to the Premier of the State Council, requesting that the government make a careful decision on the development of Nujiang hydropower resources.
Jiang Gaoming, chief research fellow at the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, published an article on March 2 pointing out that “the Nujiang is the Nujiang of the Chinese people, a heritage left by nature to humankind, not the Nujiang of the local government, and even less the Nujiang of interest groups”; the current closed decision-making procedure for hydropower development must be changed as soon as possible.
In their open letter, the 21 environmental NGOs stated that the Nujiang Gorge lies in the core of the Hengduan Mountains on the China-Myanmar border. Sending electricity eastward is bound to come at a high cost, and consuming the electricity locally through energy-intensive industries helps maximize hydropower interests.
In fact, the prospects for Nujiang hydropower development have already begun to attract energy-intensive industries to settle in Nujiang. A number of major projects have successively broken ground: the first phase of the Lanqian project, a 100,000-ton zinc electrolysis project, has been completed and put into operation; the second phase of Lanqian’s 100,000-ton zinc electrolysis project, the 30,000-ton strontium carbonate project, the 160,000-ton tail-gas sulfuric acid project, and the 1.8-million-ton dry-process cement project have all fully launched preparatory work; and the 100,000-ton industrial silicon project in the Lushui Industrial Park, an energy-intensive project, has begun construction. Once these energy-intensive industries are fully rolled out, they could cause serious damage to the local fragile ecological environment.
Faced with the rising calls for environmental protection once again, Bai Enpei, then Party secretary of Yunnan Province, told the media during this year’s “Two Sessions”: “I am on the side that supports doing it.” He said, “We must do this, not only in the Nujiang area, but also including other rivers.”
Before Bai Enpei made that statement, the Nujiang Prefectural Party Committee and the prefectural government had already made clear the basic principle of “not wavering in striving for large hydropower, and not relaxing in developing small hydropower,” and had put forward the strategic plan of strengthening the prefecture through a “mining-electricity economy.”
Nowadays, every major hotel room in Liku has a magazine called Business Elite placed in it. The cover article, “Duan Yueqing Speaks at Length on Nujiang’s Second Great Leap,” says that Duan Yueqing, the “doctorate-holding Party secretary of Nujiang Prefecture,” has, over the past half year or so, “looked far ahead, planned and directed wisely, possessed a mind full of scholarship, understood the situation, and formulated with penetrating force a grand strategic goal for Nujiang’s implementation of a second leap.”
The article defines Nujiang’s “direct passage” from the late primitive society into socialist society in the early years after liberation as the “first leap,” while today’s “second leap” is to build the “three bases and one brand,” including a state-level hydropower base, a state-level nonferrous metals base, a state-level multiethnic culture base, a state-level ecological diversity base, and a world-class tourism brand.
Recently, Nujiang Prefecture has also proposed putting “building the prefecture through ecology” first in its development thinking. The head of a Yunnan environmental organization said that the local government in Nujiang wants both mining-electricity development and biodiversity plus a tourism brand, and that this sounds “self-contradictory.”
Receiving “warnings” on one hand, quietly building on the other
Nujiang has many crowns in the international arena. The most eye-catching is that on July 2, 2003, the “Three Parallel Rivers,” including the Nujiang, as China’s only protected area that fully met all four World Natural Heritage criteria, was successfully inscribed on the World Heritage List in just 18 minutes.
However, just as people were still immersed in the joy of the successful heritage nomination, in August 2003 the Report on Hydropower Planning for the Middle and Lower Nujiang passed expert review organized by the National Development and Reform Commission. Thereafter, the “Three Parallel Rivers” was “warned” for four consecutive years by the UN Heritage Conference and placed on a key monitoring and protection list.
From April 5 to 14, 2006, experts from the International Union for Conservation of Nature and UNESCO went to Yunnan to submit a report pointing out that the main threats facing the Three Parallel Rivers World Natural Heritage site included: hydropower development already under planning; boundary re-designation to suit economic development needs such as mining and dam construction; and the development of tourism.
That year, the 30th World Heritage Committee adopted Resolution No. 30COMN1083, requiring China to submit a report to the World Heritage Centre by February 2007 on the circumstances understood by the experts.
In the report China later submitted in January 2007, it explained that the basic planning in the Report on Hydropower Planning for the Middle and Lower Nujiang Basin, compiled by the General Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Planning and Design, proposed an “eleven-stage” development plan. Because the Shanda and Gongshan dams among them were within the heritage site, the “eleven-stage” scheme was later changed to a “nine-stage” scheme, with a planned total installed capacity of 18.28 million kilowatts. At present, the basic planning in the Report on Hydropower Planning for the Middle and Lower Nujiang Basin is still in the stage of argumentation and research.
The report also stated at the end that China has strict laws and regulations for the protection of heritage sites, prohibiting dam construction and mining activities within heritage sites.
On the eve of the 31st World Heritage Committee meeting last year, the Yunnan provincial government announced that in the “Three Parallel Rivers” area, a World Natural Heritage site within the province, it would resolutely “build no power stations and open no mines,” and would implement key protection measures.
Subsequently, at the heritage committee meeting held on June 23, 2007, the rectification plan for the “Three Parallel Rivers” did not encounter further trouble, but the committee required China to produce a complete, scientific assessment report on the environmental damage that projects such as dam construction in the middle reaches of the Nujiang might bring to the “Three Parallel Rivers,” and to submit it at next year’s World Heritage meeting. If the “Three Parallel Rivers” again failed to receive effective remediation next year, the title of “World Heritage” would very likely be revoked.
UN experts specifically required China to promptly and transparently disclose any future project plans near the “Three Parallel Rivers,” “hoping that local governments in China that enjoy World Heritage status can understand from the ‘Three Parallel Rivers’ that becoming World Heritage means more bearing responsibility and fulfilling commitments; it is by no means simply about enjoying tourism income and developing as one pleases.”
However, the scene from 2003 seemed to play out once again. Not long after the committee meeting ended, from July 9 to 10, 2007, Duan Yueqing, Party secretary of Nujiang Prefecture, and Hou Xinhua, the prefectural governor, went to Beijing to brief the National Development and Reform Commission and the State Council’s Western Development Office on the “Nujiang issue.”
From July 20 to 22, 2007, the National Development and Reform Commission and the State Council’s Western Development Office organized relevant ministries and commissions to conduct field visits and investigations, and on the 23rd held a work symposium with the Yunnan provincial government on the overall development of Nujiang.
At the meeting, officials from various ministries and commissions stated that Nujiang should give priority to hydropower development. An official from the National Development and Reform Commission said that regarding hydropower development, the NDRC had already reached a basically unified view: for the hydropower development of the middle and lower Nujiang, the one-reservoir, four-stage implementation plan should be given priority in the near term; the two-reservoir, thirteen-stage resource development plan should be considered again after further research and argumentation in the future.
According to workers construction at the site of Liku Hydropower Station, it was also around that time that they began entering the site for construction. Before that, in January 2007, the villagers of Xiaoshaba Village had already responded to the government’s call, left their ancestral homes, and been relocated to the “new village” downstream.
The planning EIA procedure that was bypassed
In the report China submitted to the United Nations last year, it finally mentioned that one very important part of the environmental impact assessment work carried out for dam construction and mining activities is to rigorously and scientifically analyze and evaluate the possible impact of dam construction and mining activities on heritage sites.
According to a report from Nujiang Daily, the organ newspaper of the Nujiang Prefectural Party Committee, the hydropower EIA planning for Nujiang has now been completed.
As early as 2005, environmental organizations and experts had jointly written to the relevant departments, urging that in Nujiang hydropower development, public participation in environmental impact assessment should be incorporated in accordance with the requirements of the Environmental Impact Assessment Law. On February 14, 2006, the Interim Measures for Public Participation in Environmental Impact Assessment, issued and implemented by the State Environmental Protection Administration, for the first time proposed that information disclosure should be carried out at the early stage of EIA, thereby providing a new legal basis for this request for public disclosure.
The relevant departments have remained tight-lipped on this matter, and the environmental organizations’ request has yet to receive any formal reply.
The Chinese government’s report also mentioned another very important point: the Water Law of the People’s Republic of China stipulates that in developing and utilizing water resources, basin-wide integrated planning must be formulated, that is, an overall arrangement for developing, utilizing, conserving, protecting water resources and preventing water disasters, prepared according to the needs of economic and social development and the current state of water-resource development and use.
The Water Law stipulates that hydropower planning must subordinate itself to basin planning. Weng Lida, former director of the Water Resources Protection Bureau of the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission, said that especially in areas where hydropower development is controversial, such as the Three Parallel Rivers region, there is simply no need to make a decision immediately.
What worries Weng Lida is that hydropower companies are currently racing to carve up water rights in the Three Parallel Rivers. Once a project begins construction, it creates a fait accompli that is very hard to reverse, and most of them are cascade developments linked end to end. In response to the frenzy of hydropower development in the upper reaches of the Yangtze, Wang Shucheng, former minister of water resources, once lamented at the “Yangtze Forum”: “They went too hard; not a single meter was spared.”
Last year, the Yunnan Provincial Committee of the China Democratic League proposed that the Nujiang basin should be comprehensively planned before development, pointing out that the Nujiang basin has yet to undergo a comprehensive, integrated scientific survey and investigation and evaluation, and that it even more lacks a basin-wide integrated plan for protection and development. The only hydropower-specific planning now available cannot substitute for a comprehensive basin plan.
This proposal also pointed out that some people believe the coordination-control zone is close to the river surface and can be developed, and thus does not fall within the protection scope. But since it is a World Heritage site, its integrity should be considered. The biodiversity of the Nujiang is often precisely the result of its vertically distributed geological environment; everything from the river to the mountain peaks should fall within the scope of World Heritage protection. And hydropower development will inevitably raise the area of human habitation.
In the investigation, experts discovered that some of the basic data currently used regarding the Nujiang largely continue old assertions from many years ago, and that their sources are inconsistent and the versions vary; in some cases, even the same data differ by more than tenfold.
“Even if there is a basin-wide integrated plan, that is still not enough; one must also carry out an EIA for the basin plan. Only after the EIA is approved can the hydropower project plan be formulated, and only after the hydropower plan passes the EIA can construction begin,” said the head of a Yunnan NGO. “The current situation of Liku Hydropower Station is that this procedure has been bypassed.”
Last year, the State Environmental Protection Administration stressed that in the future no hydropower project may be approved without a basin planning EIA. Zhu Xingxiang, director of the Environmental Impact Assessment Department of the State Environmental Protection Administration, said that “planning EIA is an important way for rivers and lakes to recuperate and recover,” and that China must break through the water-environment crisis through planning EIA.
The issue of resettlement caused by “leasing in place of requisition”
The villagers of Xiaoshaba have happily moved into their new homes for more than a year now, but life in the “new village” has not increased their sense of happiness. On the contrary, because they are dissatisfied with some of the government’s resettlement policies, they have recently blocked workers at the hydropower station from carrying out construction several times. At present, because construction cannot proceed, the twenty-odd workers stationed in the old village have already taken travel allowances and gone home, waiting to return and resume work once the resettlement issue is resolved.
The “new village” is less than 1,000 meters from the old village. The Nujiang rushes past the village in full flood. Seen from across the river, row upon row of attractive two-story Western-style houses stand neatly arranged, with shops below and residences above. This is a pilot site for the construction of socialist new villages in Nujiang Prefecture.
Having left the land, the villagers are worried about how they will make a living in the future. In the “new village,” they cannot raise pigs, and it is even more difficult to raise cattle; even raising chickens is problematic, and there is not a single vegetable plot. The villagers say that higher-ups have advocated increasing income by renting out storefronts, but the problem now is that some villagers are even short of housing for themselves, and no one is currently willing to rent their storefronts.
What most displeases the villagers is that the government has occupied their arable land through a method of “leasing in place of requisition.” “If you’re only leasing it, then just lease it—why do you have to dig it up?” one villager complained. “Just like if you rent someone else’s house, can you tear the house down?”
“Leasing in place of requisition” is an illegal practice repeatedly prohibited by the state in stern warnings. In September 2006, the Notice of the State Council on Strengthening Relevant Issues in Land Regulation and Control explicitly stated that it is forbidden to use collectively owned farmland of peasants for non-agricultural construction through “leasing in place of requisition” and similar means, or to expand the scale of construction land without authorization.
However, in order to advance the construction of Liku Hydropower Station, after the villagers of Xiaoshaba moved away, the Nujiang Prefectural Government last October formulated and promulgated the Interim Transitional Plan for the Livelihood Resettlement of the Left-Bank Construction Area of Liku Hydropower Station (hereinafter referred to as the “Plan”).
The Plan explicitly states that Liku Hydropower Station is the first hydropower station slated for development in the “two reservoirs, thirteen stages” grand hydropower development of the Nujiang, and is the “trial power station” for the development of the Nujiang basin established by the provincial Party committee and provincial government. Because of multiple reasons, the Liku Hydropower Station project awaits formal national approval in the next stage. In order to push forward the preparatory work for the station’s construction as quickly as possible, before the state grants approval, a transitional living allowance policy will be implemented for the relocated people in the construction area.
The Plan cites State Council Order No. 471, the Regulations on Compensation for Land Requisition and Resettlement in Large and Medium-sized Water Conservancy and Hydropower Projects, as the relevant policy basis. However, the regulations clearly stipulate that large and medium-sized water conservancy and hydropower projects must prepare a resettlement planning outline, and that when preparing it, the opinions of the relocated persons and residents of the resettlement area should be widely heard; where necessary, hearings should be held. After the outline is approved, a resettlement plan must still be prepared according to the outline and submitted for approval; only after approval may relocation proceed.
According to the villagers of Xiaoshaba, throughout the entire relocation process, the relevant departments never solicited their opinions, and they had never even heard of any resettlement plan.
At last year’s “Work Symposium on the Overall Development Thinking of Nujiang Prefecture,” Luo Zhengfu, executive vice governor of Yunnan Province, asked relevant state ministries and commissions to focus on helping and resolving issues such as the approval of the Hydropower Development Plan for the Middle and Lower Nujiang and resettlement for relocation. In fact, by then the villagers of Xiaoshaba had already completed their relocation.
On February 18, 2004, Premier Wen Jiabao issued an instruction on the Nujiang hydropower development: “study it carefully, make decisions scientifically.” The National Development and Reform Commission later organized symposiums on multiple occasions. But the “Plan” reveals that since 2003, preparatory work for the Liuku Hydropower Station and the entire Nujiang River basin hydropower construction has never stopped. “The attitude of governments at all levels is: although the hydropower construction project has not been formally approved, all the preparatory work for the Liuku Hydropower Station cannot be stopped.”
Does hydropower development equal getting out of poverty and becoming prosperous?
One important argument in support of Nujiang hydropower development is poverty alleviation. Official Nujiang statistics show that at the end of the “Tenth Five-Year Plan,” the prefecture had 275,300 people living in poverty, accounting for 60% of the agricultural population of the whole prefecture; 45,000 extremely poor households were living in thatched houses, accounting for 47% of all farm households in the prefecture.
“You can’t have the people in the Nujiang region still wearing animal skins, and then, in the name of ecotourism, have everyone come to visit them.” At the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Yunnan Party Secretary Bai Enpei told reporters, “They also have the right to survive and develop.”
In fact, from Liuku northward along the Nujiang Grand Canyon all the way to Bingzhongluo, thatched houses are now hard to see; most buildings have asbestos-tile roofs. And these farm households living along the river are precisely the people most affected by hydropower development. There are reports that after the Maji Hydropower Station is completed, the entire Gongshan County seat will be submerged, and there is not a single thatched house to be seen in the county town.
A villager who still lives in the old village of Xiaoshaba said that someone had told reporters who came to interview them that they too were still living in thatched houses. “My house, at today’s prices, could be sold for four or five hundred thousand yuan; the biggest problem right now is that the compensation they’re giving me is unreasonable, so I’m not moving.” Speaking of wearing animal skins, she chuckled, “My clothes cost me more than a hundred or two hundred yuan.”
“To emphasize the importance of Nujiang hydropower development, the poverty of Nujiang’s ordinary people has been exaggerated and magnified far too much,” said Wang Yongchen, head of the Green Home volunteer group.
Although the Nujiang region is remote, prices in its towns are not low; they are even higher than in the provincial capital, Kunming. Xiaoshaba Village is considered one of the relatively better-off villages in Nujiang. After resettlement, villagers’ worries about their future lives have grown day by day. There are even rumors that in the future they will have to make a living by picking up garbage. “We believe the government won’t let us live like that,” one villager said.
Finally, at the end of last year, with doubts about the “new countryside,” 86 villagers signed and put their fingerprints on a submission to the county government, the “Opinion Letter of All Villagers of Liuku Town Xiaoshaba New Countryside,” saying that “new countryside construction is supposed to be a scene full of joy and happiness, but our Xiaoshaba Village is instead a scene full of tension and anxiety, because all the villagers cannot accept the temporary transitional resettlement plan for production that the government has posted publicly.”
The villagers proposed that requisitioned land absolutely must not be handled through the method of “renting in place of expropriation”; “in short, ‘no money received, absolutely no land can be moved.’”
As a key area for Nujiang hydropower development, there are very few river terraces in Nujiang Prefecture, and the terraces are mostly by the riverbank, concentrating most of the prefecture’s residents. Most of the other villages are also distributed along the river valleys. Building dams floods farmland and relocates people, yet Nujiang Prefecture is a place where one cannot find even a single football field. “Even according to the currently announced 40,000 to 50,000 migrants, resettlement will be relatively difficult,” the proposal from the Yunnan branch of the China Democratic League said.
Weng Lida said that hydropower development does not equal getting out of poverty and becoming prosperous; the two cannot be equated. In some places, local governments’ understanding is seriously problematic, and their thinking is very naive. Local governments pay more attention to developing the local economy, which is to some extent related to the current performance evaluation mechanism.
The Yamu River in Fugong County is a tributary of the Nujiang; three small hydropower stations have already been built on it. Local residents work for the power stations, carrying dozens of kilograms of sand up steep mountain slopes to the top. One day’s work earns 30 yuan. By contrast, at the construction site of the Dimaluo Hydropower Station upstream, a technician from the electric power department said that he only needs to work two hours a day and can earn more than 200 yuan a day. At the material yard of the Liuku Hydropower Station, nearly all the workers on site are from elsewhere.
And in Xiaoshaba Village, which has already been relocated, while the villagers are worrying about their future livelihoods, the village chief has already purchased four trucks, two excavators, and one bulldozer, preparing to throw himself into the future hydropower construction in a big way.
“Can Nujiang hydropower development really bring wealth to local residents?” During a recent visit to Nujiang, Counselor to the State Council and member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Ren Yuling saw that after the hydropower stations were built, high-voltage power lines stretched across the dilapidated rooftops of ordinary people, yet they still lived in darkness without electricity. “The fact that the people of Nujiang live in poverty is undeniable, but is hydropower development the only way out for Nujiang?” Ren Yuling said. “This is a question worth pondering.”
A young Lisu man, Xiao Lin (a pseudonym), was very saddened when he heard the news that construction on the Liuku Hydropower Station had begun. “It’s one thing to build small hydropower stations everywhere on the tributaries, but why also build a big station on the mainstream?” he said. “Among us Lisu people, there are only those who starve themselves to death from laziness; there are none who die of poverty.”
The mad proliferation of small hydropower has already ravaged the Nujiang Gorge
Every summer, the small rivers around Fugong County seat gurgle and murmur. In some gently sloping places on the mountains, the water gathers and turns into pools of clear water. Lisu children love to splash and play there; fish swim past them, and mountain flowers bloom profusely. This is Xiao Lin’s memory of childhood.
“I heard that almost every tributary around here has been sold to bosses for hydropower development.” Xiao Lin is deeply worried about the current feverish development of small hydropower. From Liuku to Bingzhongluo, small hydropower stations under construction and already built are scattered along both banks of the Nujiang; the mountains have been gouged into piles of broken rock, and the roads built for the stations carve Z-shaped scars into the mountainside.
“Shocking to the eye, riddled with holes,” Ren Yuling described it thus. And this is only part of Nujiang’s small hydropower development. More stations are hidden in the forests and mountains, most of them built in the past two years. Before the large station had even formally been announced to begin construction, the Nujiang Gorge had already turned into one huge construction site.
The Yamu River, a tributary of the Nujiang in Fugong, has 3 small hydropower stations built on it. “Originally the water was very large and very clear, but now the water has become muddy and smaller,” Xiao Lin said.
Dimaluo in Gongshan County is also known by local people as “the place where flowers bloom.” Now a relatively large hydropower station is being built there. The Dimaluo River Hydropower Station has a total installed capacity of 72,000 kilowatts and a total investment of 350 million yuan. It has been under construction for 3 years and will take another 2 years to complete. A reservoir is being built in heavily weathered mountains, and the dam is an earth dam. “One can’t help thinking of the Banqiao Reservoir in 1975,” said an environmental activist.
According to official Nujiang figures, as of the end of last year, 45 companies had entered Nujiang to develop medium- and small-scale hydropower, with agreements to develop 65 rivers, plans to build 85 stations, a planned total installed capacity of 1,357,300 kilowatts, and an estimated total investment of more than 6 billion yuan. At present, 25 stations have already begun trial operation and generated electricity, adding 351,750 kilowatts of installed capacity, which is already nearly twice the 180,000 kilowatts of the Liuku Hydropower Station that is to be built; before that, Nujiang Prefecture’s total installed capacity was only 63,600 kilowatts.
The Shangpa River flows through Fugong County seat and irrigates land several kilometers downstream; the river valley is home to many rare plants. In 2006, when Xiao Lin heard that a station would be built on this river, he bought a single-lens reflex camera. He wanted to preserve the beautiful scenery of his hometown’s rivers—not in reality, but in photographs.
Fugong County has, through attracting investment, successively introduced 19 hydropower companies and reached agreements on the hydropower development rights of 27 first-level tributaries of the Nujiang within its borders, with plans to build 35 stations. Since 2003, as power generation has kept increasing, so too have tax revenues, and local fiscal revenue has grown at an annual rate of 40%. Government reports say: “The development and construction of medium and small hydropower in our county has already displayed its charm in increasing fiscal revenue.” But local farmers report that their income has not changed noticeably.
The Nujiang’s geological structure is unstable and it is an earthquake-prone area; almost every tributary entrance has experienced mudslides. Many small hydropower stations either hang on cliff faces or sit at the bottoms of slopes, with traces of mudslides nearby. “They are extremely likely to trigger geological disasters; with the slightest disturbance, they will be washed away,” said Yang Yong, a visiting researcher at the Chengdu Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, after seeing them, expressing concern.
The karst cave “Walayakuk,” located at the border between Daxingdi and Chenggang Township in Lushui County, is a famous scenic spot in Nujiang. A hydropower station was built on the Banana River within the scenic area. Around the Dragon Boat Festival last year, the station released water, and as a result the floodwater poured into the cave, eventually surging out from the cave mouth and washing away the road in front of the cave.
Yang, the boss who contracted one scenic spot, introduced that the water flowed for half a year. Although the cave is now free of water, business has not been easy since that accident. Electricity costs are his biggest expense. Even though the station is right above, the electricity generated goes through the grid and is sold to him at 70 fen per kilowatt-hour. At present, he has not yet received compensation, because the government has not yet determined whether this is a natural disaster or man-made harm. “This is clearly caused by the station; water has never burst through here in hundreds of years.”
“Can we leave Nujiang to our descendants?”
Since 2003, debate over Nujiang hydropower development has risen and fallen in waves. The government, NGOs, experts and scholars, and countless news media have all joined in this protracted war of words, yet the voices of ordinary local people in Nujiang are rarely heard.
Xiao Lin was indignant at the claim that “the ecological environment of Nujiang has been severely damaged by the local people.” He said, “I hope everyone will go deep into our forests and into our lives. The Lisu people all plant bamboo and peach trees beside their houses. The places that have been severely damaged are either where large machines are building roads or where stations are being built.”
At the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Bai Enpei told the media, “If you haven’t been there in person, you may well doubt how a dam could be built in such a beautiful place. But that is not the case. The sites we plan to build are in remote border areas, where nearly all the trees have been cut down.”
Bai Enpei acknowledged that persuading environmental organizations to give up their objections may be difficult, but he also said that this year he planned to organize a group of experts, scholars, media reporters, and representatives of environmentalists to go to Nujiang for an on-site inspection. “At the same time, we also welcome all civil environmental protection organizations and individuals to engage in dialogue and communication with us.”
Environmental activists welcomed this. “We also hope for equal and open dialogue,” said the head of an NGO in Yunnan.
Since early March, with news of the start of construction on the Liuku Hydropower Station having been made public, reporters have been arriving one after another to cover Liuku. At the same time, many people in plain clothes have appeared around Xiaoshaba Village, preventing villagers and reporters from contacting each other. The border inspection station at the entrance to the Nujiang highway was also given instructions to send reporters who came to cover hydropower development back the way they came. “We can’t let people ruin Nujiang’s development,” said a border inspection officer.
“The electricity from Nujiang could be absent from all of China, but Nujiang is the only one for us.” Xiao Lin believes his hometown is the most beautiful place. After finishing his investigation of Nujiang, Counselor to the State Council and Standing Committee member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Ren Yuling said with emotion: “Must every river be rushed into development? Can we leave Nujiang to our descendants?”
Government documents prove it is “not approved”
The “Temporary Transitional Plan for the Production Resettlement of Migrants in the Left Bank Construction Zone of the Liuku Hydropower Station,” formulated and promulgated by the Nujiang Prefecture government last October, reveals that since 2003, preparatory work for the Liuku Hydropower Station and the entire Nujiang basin hydropower construction has never stopped. “The attitude of governments at all levels is: although the hydropower construction project has not been formally approved, all the preparatory work for the Liuku Hydropower Station cannot be stopped.”
![clip_image001[4]](http://philo.ixiezi.com/files/2010/12/clip_image00141.jpg)
A Nujiang man, criticized by a leader for wearing animal skins, while across the river the project disfiguring Nujiang is already in full swing
![clip_image002[4]](http://philo.ixiezi.com/files/2010/12/clip_image00241.jpg)
The man wearing animal skins says the gold ring his wife bought him for his birthday
By the Nujiang today
The riverbank today
Beside the green water
The riverside that is being excavated
The filming location on the tributary Dimaluo River is at an altitude of 1,888 meters; the excavation above is even higher
One of the tributaries that have been almost entirely developed
The village leader’s new car
Families in the new farm village who can no longer fit in their homes have had no choice but to solve their housing problems on their own
the undammed tributary
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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