china damming brahmaputra

[asif1986]

Brahmaputra (Yarlung Tsangpo), one of the last two free-flowing, undammed major rivers in Tibet, AND China, is also being dammed. Salween is the other major river that environmentalists tried to save from dam projects but to no avail. A China Daily story yesterday acknowledged that the "Zangmu Water Power Station" is on the main stream of the middle reaches of Brahmaputra. Sources tell me that there are five dams planned in this section of the river, and construction has been going on since 2006. This means there is no undammed major river in China and Tibet. The installed capacity of 'Zangmu Water Power Station' will be 510 MW (85 MW x 6 turbines). The project is located in Lhokha (Shannan) Prefecture of Tibet Autonomous Region, about 140 km southeast from Lhasa, between Zangs-Ri (Sangri) and rGya-Tsha (Jiacha) counties. Construction work on the first dam is likely to start soon. Huaneng, China's top power company, is backing the financing of the project and, Gezhouba, one of China's biggest dam construction companies, will build the project. This news should be particularly alarming for people living in downstream countries of India and Bangladesh. China is likely to approve more dam projects on the Brahmaputra this year

[asif1986]

from
TIbetan Plateau: Dams on Tibetan areas of Brahmaputra and Mekong