Title: Thousands being moved from China's Three Gorges - again | Reuters
Headings: Thousands being moved from China's Three Gorges - again
Thousands being moved from China's Three Gorges - again
RECONSTRUCTION

Content: Picture taken on August 7, 2012. To match story CHINA-THREEGORGES/ REUTERS/Carlos Barria
It’s a reminder of the social and environmental challenges that have dogged the world’s largest hydroelectric project. While there has been little protest among residents who will be relocated a second time, the environmental fallout over other big investments in China has become a hot-button issue ahead of a leadership transition this year. In some cases, protests have forced the scrapping of multi-billion dollar projects. The most recent was on July 28, when Chinese officials cancelled an industrial waste pipeline after anti-pollution demonstrators occupied a government office in the eastern city of Qidong, destroying computers and overturning cars. “If the government says you have to move, you move,” said Shuai Linxiang, a 57-year-old woman among 20,000 people to be relocated from Huangtupo, where they were resettled in 1998. “ We can’t oppose them.” The Three Gorges dam was completed in July when its final turbine joined the national grid and the facility reached its full capacity of 22.5 gigawatts, more than enough to power Pakistan or Switzerland. As the dam was being built on the Yangtze River, in central Hubei province, authorities moved 1.3 million people who lived in what became its 1,045 sq km (405 sq mile) reservoir, an area greater in size than Singapore. Reuters was recently given a rare tour of the 181-metre (600-ft) tall dam and reservoir.