Landscape Impacts Spur Major Repairs to Three Gorges Dam

Repairs and resettlement is expected to cost about $15 billion -- almost half the cost of its original construction.

"For years the Chinese government refused to acknowledge any dark side to its proudest engineering feat, the largest hydropower project in the world that is also designed to prevent the sort of catastrophic floods that have stricken millions of farmers in the Yangtze Basin for millenniums. Begun in 1994, it opened in 2008.

Two months ago, however, the State Council, China's cabinet, recognized that the dam had caused 'urgent problems regarding the smooth relocation of residents, ecological protection, and geological disaster prevention.'"