Is The Three Gorges Dam To Blame For Extreme Drought In The Lake Poyang Area?

By

Mu Lan Editor Chinese Three Gorges Probe

May 2014

PROBE INTERNATIONAL

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Drought At Lake Poyang

As has been widely reported, Lake Poyang – ’s largest freshwater lake, located on the southern bank of the Yangtze River in southeastern Province – has been struck by a devastating drought. According to the province’s Xingzi Hydrological Station, on November 14, 2013, the lake’s water level dropped to 7.99 metres above sea level. This ranks as one of the lake’s lowest water levels recorded in decades, compared to a normal water level of 12.22 metres the previous year. According to experts at the Jiangxi Research Institute for Water Resources – a government department under the Water Resources Bureau of Jiangxi Province – when water levels drop to below 10 metres in the fall this signals the arrival of the dry season and if water levels drop below 8 metres this signals the appearance of extremely low water levels. According to a November 14, 2013 Xinhua report, satellite images revealed that Lake Poyang’s total water surface area shrank by 90% from 2,822 km2 on August 7, 2013, to 1,375 km2 on November 5, to only 293 km2 on November 14.

As the editor of Probe International’s Three Gorges Probe Chinese language news service, I travelled to the Lake Poyang area twice in early November 2013 to observe the situation for myself. Standing on the Lake Poyang viewing pier near the county seat of Xingzi, close to , the second largest city in Jiangxi Province, I saw that most of the lakebed was exposed, while an abundance of tall grass and wildflowers had grown up everywhere. Dead fish, dried mussels and snails littered the dry lake floor, while groups of cows leisurely enjoyed fresh grass growing in the former lakebed.

“Where is Lake Poyang?” I asked Mr. Yu, the driver I had hired in Jiujiang City. Pointing to the wild “grassland,” he exclaimed: “This is Poyang! Poyang is just below your feet!” “But why don't I see any water?" I asked. "Ha! Ha!” he responded. “Of course there is lots of water, and the water is everywhere! Unfortunately, not now, but in summer you would see the water this high," he said, pointing towards the shore. True. I saw the telltale wavy lines produced by seasons of rising and falling water levels spanning years.

Is The Three Gorges Dam Responsible For The Extreme Drought In Lake Poyang?

I believed I had truly hired the right person to drive me to Lake Poyang when I discovered Mr. Yu was a good talker, and that he was also familiar with the area and knew many things about Lushan (Lu Mountain) – located in the northern part of Jiangxi Province and one of China’s most famous attractions. He was well versed on the area’s local history, its ancient architecture and historical figures, and, of course, Lake Poyang. He told me that there is always a dry season every year in Poyang, but in recent years the dry season has arrived earlier and drought conditions have become worse. “As I understand, the Three Gorges is responsible for this," Mr. Yu told me. "Are you sure?” I said. “But the dam is almost one thousand kilometers away from here.” He replied: "I am not an expert in this topic, but everybody says that here. There has been lots of discussion on the Internet, especially on the local BBS (bulletin board service). If you watch TV, read newspapers or surf the Web, you will get tons of information on this.”

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Of course, there is no shortage of coverage on the subject in the Chinese media. On November 7, 2013, the Economic and Financial Channel under the banner of the state-run CCTV (China Central Television) broadcast a special program on the issue. The program gave three major reasons for the sharp decline of Lake Poyang’s water levels: first, there had been no precipitation for a month (based on records provided by Jiangxi’s Poyang Hydrological Bureau, the last day of rain was October 7, 2013); second, the uncurbed dredging of Poyang’s lakebed for its premium quality sand; and third, but no less important, the impounding of the Three Gorges Dam reservoir located upstream on the Yangtze River.

The findings of hard-working local experts investigating the issue lend technical support to the conclusions of the CCTV report. Based on a November 6, 2013 report posted by the Jiangnan Urban Daily (Jiangnan dushi bao), a study conducted by the Jiangxi Research Institute for Water Resources described the impact of the Three Gorges Dam operations on Lake Poyang as follows: “The water levels in Lake Poyang are not significantly high while the dam project is discharging water from its reservoir in the flood season, but the water levels are really low in Lake Poyang while the dam is impounding water in the dry season.”

As the study explained, the Three Gorges Dam’s operating regime – storing water to generate electricity and releasing it to provide flood storage capacity – has its most significant impact on the lake during the impoundment period from September to October each year. This period coincides with naturally occurring seasonal declines in both the Yangtze River and Lake Poyang’s water levels. From November to the following January and February, Poyang’s water levels regularly decline because the five rivers that feed the lake – the Gan, Fu, Xin, Rao and Xiu Rivers – are also receiving less water from their upstream watersheds. Though Poyang has reduced water flowing into it in this period, because the Yangtze’s water levels downstream of the dam are significantly lower during the dam’s impoundment period, the waters of Lake Poyang, are still relatively higher than the Yangtze. As a result, Lake Poyang drains into the Yangtze, making the loss of lake water and subsequent drought all the more severe.

For example, according to data recorded by the Hydrological Bureau of Jiangxi Province, at 8 a.m. on January 2, 2012, the total inflow from the five rivers that feed Lake Poyang measured only 732 m3/s in volume, while the lake’s outflow into the Yangtze was as much as 1,280 m3/s, thus causing a sharp decline in Poyang’s water levels.

The study also revealed that the colour of both the Yangtze River and Lake Poyang was entirely different before the Three Gorges Dam began its impoundment in 2003: the river typically appeared muddy while the lake was clear, a fact clearly visible in the county seat of Hukou (Hukou means lake mouth in Chinese, where the river and the lake join each other). At present, although the contrast is still as obvious, the situation has reversed itself: in the dry season of each year, the river is clear and the lake is muddy. According to experts at the Jiangxi Research Institute for Water Resources, one of the major reasons for this is that almost half of the lake’s water now flows into the Yangtze.

The hydrogeomorphology is as follows: In general, both the river and the lake have experienced natural seasonal changes in colour; muddy in the flood season and clear in the

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dry season. This is so because the flow is greater in the flood season and the sediment carried in that flow is also much greater (compared to the dry season). Under natural conditions, Lake Poyang would be clearer than the Yangtze River in both the flood and the dry seasons because the water from the five upstream rivers (the Gan, Fu, Xin, Rao and Xiu rivers) flows into the lake and gradually deposits its sediment load in the lake.

That changed, however, with the construction of the Three Gorges project, especially in the dry season. Since the Three Gorges Dam’s operations began, the annual impoundment of water behind the dam begins in middle to late September,i after the flood season, and the reservoir reaches its highest level in November of each year. As a result, the flow of water in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze during this period, below the dam, has been drastically reduced, causing much lower water levels downstream when compared to the natural flow regime that existed before the dam was built. Furthermore, under natural conditions, the Yangtze River flowed into Lake Poyang in the rainy season (from July to September), swelling the lake and, in the dry season, Lake Poyang flowed into the Yangtze (from September to January). Though that same seasonal water transfer still exists, after the Three Gorges Dam began operating, the rate at which water flowed back and forth between the river and the lake changed dramatically. Now, during the rainy season, the Yangtze flows into Lake Poyang at a greatly diminished rate, while in the dry season, because water levels in the Yangtze are so low, the flow rate from Lake Poyang into the Yangtze is much greater.

According to experts in Jiangxi Province, from mid-September to mid-November 2013 – the dry season – almost half of Lake Poyang’s water flowed into the Yangtze, much more than would have occurred prior to 2003. Now, when the water in Lake Poyang drains rapidly into the Yangtze, it churns up and suspends the sediment originally deposited in the lake, making Poyang muddier than the Yangtze. Another factor contributes to Lake Poyang’s lower water levels: dams and reservoirs on the five rivers that feed the lake are themselves being impounded during the dry season, further reducing the flow of water into the lake.

According to an October 19, 2013 Xinhua report, data from the Hydrological Bureau indicates that between 1956-2002 the average date for the beginning of Lake Poyang’s annual drought period was December 1. That date moved forward to October 27 for the period between 2003-2013, which coincides with the impoundment of the Three Gorges Dam reservoir.

Analysis conducted by experts at the Jiangxi Hydrological Bureau confirms that several factors have contributed to the advance of drought at Lake Poyang since the 1950s: the impoundment of water by a number of dams upstream on the Yangtze; uneven spatial and temporal distribution of rainfall across Jiangxi Province; and the accelerated dredging of Lake Poyang’s exposed lakebed for construction materials. ii

More and more experts agree that the dam’s operations have had a dramatic impact on the Yangtze’s downstream water levels. According to Zhang Lu, senior researcher at the Institute of Geography and Limnology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, “The

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water levels of both the Yangtze and lakes in the downstream area have changed significantly since 2003, when the Three Gorges Dam started filling its reservoir for the first time.”

Given that Lake Dongting and Lake Poyang are an integral part of the Yangtze River basin as floodplains, the Yangtze’s water levels directly affect the lakes’ inflow and outflow. Inevitably, the Yangtze’s declining water levels have led to shrinkage in the water surface of both Dongting and Poyang. Professor Zhang told China Science News (Zhongguo kexue bao) when he was interviewed on November 6, 2013: “Currently the Three Gorges is still being impounded and the water level will eventually go up as high as 175 m or to its NPL (normal pool level), so the lakes below the dam will be affected for sure.” iii

Kong Fanxiang, another senior researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, warns: “The continuous decline of water levels and shrinking of rivers and lakes means not only that local people will have difficulties accessing water supplies, but local climate conditions are likely to change, resulting in more frequent droughts and floods.” According to a November 8, 2013 report, posted on the government of ’s website, 1.02 million people are already having problems with the availability of drinking water in the Lake Poyang area.

Professor Kong also told China Science News that he is very worried about the dredging industry at Lake Poyang: “I was shocked, standing on the shore of the lake, to see so many huge dredgers working day and night, taking sand from the lake. The problem is that it seems very difficult to control the situation because dredging in the lake area has become a major source of income, even a livelihood for many local people. Both the owners of the dredgers and the workers love the business because the cost of the inputs is small and the economic returns are great, even though the environmental consequences are disastrous.”

The November 8, 2013 report posted on the Duchang County government website revealed that the pace of sand dredging in the lake area has climbed to a crazy level since 1999. For example, the deepest part of the water course between the Yangtze and Lake Poyang, in Xingzi County, measured seven metres before 1999, but became as deep as 22 metres by 2012 due to the fierce pace of dredging activity.

As Professor Zhang Lu has pointed out, the uncurbed activities of dredging will destroy the topography of the lakebed, leading to the lowering of the lakebed in some parts of Lake Poyang. “Normally the negative effects of doing so are not apparent in April and May of each year, when the water levels of the lake are high, but the effects are significant in the dry season,” he said. Even a half-metre reduction of the lakebed would be destructive in effect, said the professor.

The Lives Of Local People Are Seriously Affected By The Drought

As Professor Zhang noted, local people view the dredging of sand in Lake Poyang as an important source of income, especially as an alternative to the livelihoods lost as a result of the sharp decline in the lake’s water levels.

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Fishing, for example, was the first local industry to be harmed by falling water levels. When interviewed on November 7, 2013 by China Central Television (CCTV), Liu Gonggen, a fisherman on Lake Poyang for more than forty years, told CCTV he had sold his fishing boat because catching fish in the lake had become so difficult. Liu said he and his son, together with two fishermen from another family, worked hard on the lake for several days but caught only about 200 kg of fish, producing an average net profit of less than 50 yuan per worker. “It's fortunate that we generated some profit, but the earning was too little to make a living, so I had no choice but to sell my boat for good,” he said. Liu also told CCTV that in late October-early November, Lake Poyang’s water level had dropped so fast that some fishing boats were stranded on the lake. “Those who were trapped eventually managed to get back home by leaving their boats behind,” said Liu.

Master Fang iiii, the fourth generation of a fishing family in Duchang County of Jiangxi Province, is still yearning for the good old days of fishing in his youth. As reported in the November 6, 2013 edition of Jiujiang Morning News (Jiujiang chen bao), when he was about 17 or 18 years old, his father and he could catch up to 1,000 jin (1 jin = 1/2 kg) of fish with only a single cast of the net, including highly valued species such as saury, soft-shelled turtle, eels, blowfish and so on. But now, he can only manage to earn 20 yuan in one day of hard work on Lake Poyang. “There were lots and lots of fish in the lake before and it was easy to catch 200 jin of soft-shelled turtle in only one day, together with plenty of high economic value fish such as saury, eels, turtles… But, now, I am really frustrated because it’s extremely hard to catch such kinds of fish: it's impossible to catch soft-shelled turtle and turtles in general right now. I saw eel only once this year and saury is becoming less and less...” Master Fang told the Jiujiang Morning News that catching saury ranked as an exciting event because its sale price was very high: in 2012, for example, 0.25 jin or 125g of saury could be sold for 1,000 yuan. But the population of saury has fallen sharply, this year in particular. Unable to make a living fishing, Master Fang now works as a cook at a local restaurant.

Building A Dam Between Lake Poyang And The Yangtze River To Alleviate The Problem

Both the local government and the public are increasingly worried about the situation. To address the problem, the government of Jiangxi Province has proposed building a dam – the “Poyang Water Conservation Project” – to be located between Lake Poyang and the Yangtze River, in an attempt to alleviate the negative impacts of the Three Gorges project.

According to a November 7, 2013 report in the Jiangnan Urban Daily (Jiangnan dushi bao), after several rounds of public hearings, the province launched a social risk assessment program on the proposed project. The project proposal has now been submitted to the State Development and Reform Commission (SDRC) for approval. Meanwhile, the SDRC has begun gathering opinions and seeking recommendations regarding the project from various national-level ministries, as well as five other provinces and municipalities in the middle and lower Yangtze River valley.

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At a cost of 12 billion yuan, the 2,800-metre-long dam is touted to offer multiple benefits, including irrigation, water supply, navigation, tourism, aquaculture, and so on. But, argues the province, one of the most important functions of the project is to hold back Lake Poyang’s water in order to keep it from draining into the Yangtze River. Technically speaking, it is hoped that the project would regulate the lake water’s outflow – especially before and during the annual impoundment period of the Three Gorges Dam reservoir, which occurs between September and March. The official goal will be to maintain Poyang’s water levels above 10 metres above sea level all year long.

According to the plan, the Poyang Water Conservation Project (PWCP) would close its 108 sluices each year before impoundment of the Three Gorges reservoir begins in early September, in order to trap the lake’s water reserve. Once Three Gorges’ impoundment begins, the PWCP would open its sluices to release water and provide lake water to the lower Yangtze valley, which would help the downstream provinces and municipalities, including Anhui (Province) and Jiangsu (Province) and (Municipality), cope with reduced water flows resulting from the storage of water in the Three Gorges reservoir. Furthermore, the project’s proponents promise that the PWCP would help regulate the inflow of water from the Yangtze into the lake.

According to a study of the proposed PWCP’s operating mode, if the project manages to maintain a water level of 14 metres or above during the dry season of each year, most of the water supply utilities in the lake area would have access to sufficient water. The Jiangnan Urban Daily optimistically calls the proposed project a “perfect” solution to water shortages and difficulties with water use experienced in the lake area that have been caused by the impoundment of the Three Gorges Dam.

According to official promises, the supply of water and the safety of drinking water would be safeguarded for seven cities and counties in the lake district, including Xingzi, Duchang, Poyang, Yongxiu, Yugang, De’an counties, as well as City. Meanwhile, say officials, a minimum water surface and volume could be maintained, not only to increase the area under irrigation and promote grain production, but also to maintain wetland areas and help improve and protect the environment, especially for the habitats of transient species, aquatic plants and animals, and for Lake Poyang’s rare aquatic life.

Like so many official megaprojects, this one sounds too good to be true, and, say critics, in all likelihood it is.

This is not the first time the provincial government has floated the idea of the PWCP. Several years ago, the local government submitted a similar proposal to the SDRC for approval. But the powerful state agency continues, to this day, to sit on the proposal, neither approving nor rejecting it because its likelihood of success is doubted. With the crisis in Lake Poyang growing by the day, and in the past year in particular, the government of Jiangxi Province decided to revive its proposal in an effort to garner more attention to its cause, not only from the central government, but also from society as a whole.

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But, the critics argue, the PWCP would simply make a bad situation worse. As, Fan Xiao, a respected geologist in Sichuan Province, who has been monitoring the relationship between the Three Gorges Dam and the Yangtze River for years, points out, by capturing sediment and releasing “clear water” that “scours’ the riverbed downstream, the Three Gorges Dam has caused the dramatic drop in the Yangtze’s riverbed by some 11 metres. This has the effect of pulling a “plug” from , which now finds itself at a higher elevation than the river, making it inevitable that water will flow out of the lake and into the Yangtze. But, be that as it may, Fan Xiao says construction of the PWCP would cut off the remaining free-flowing link between the Yangtze River and Lake Poyang, which has seen the exchange of water between the two bodies of water for millions of years. The proposal, he points out, has not considered the environmental impacts on wetlands, aquatic plants, animals and so forth. Nor has it examined its potential to exacerbate flooding disasters.

Taking transient bird species as an example, says Fan Xiao, the habitats for as many as 300 migrating bird species would be deeply affected if the exchange of water between the Yangtze and Poyang were severed. Because Poyang’s water levels would be higher after the PWCP dam’s construction, most of the area’s wetlands and the habitats that serve millions of transient species from Siberia, Mongolia, Japan, Korea and China’s northeast and northwest would be flooded, and their sources of food would be threatened as a result. Thus, after the dam’s completion, Lake Poyang’s relatively high level of water in winter, in particular, would likely result in the flooding of a number of wetlands and prevent many bird species from heading there in winter. Fan Xiao told the author of this report on November 10, 2013 that this would ultimately lead to a decline in the area’s biodiversity.

Jiang Jiahu, a senior researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences who specializes in the Lake Poyang area and has dedicated his study to the region for more than a decade, outright opposes the dam proposal. Professor Jiang argues that the construction of the dam would completely destroy the natural river-lake water systems.

Dongting and Poyang represent the only two big floodplain lakes that link to the Yangtze River in the middle and lower Yangtze valley. As such, they have, for centuries, played a vital role in controlling floods along the Yangtze downstream of the Three Gorges. Building a dam between the Yangtze and Lake Poyang would destroy the lake’s flood-control function and increase the risk of flooding to downstream areas.

In addition, a number of fish species in the Yangtze migrate and enter Lake Poyang for spawning from late March to late June each year. Some of these fish travel a long distance from the Yangtze’s estuary to spawn in Lake Poyang near the Xiajiang County area, before returning to the sea after they mature. If the dam were completed as planned, the path of spawning and growth for many fish species would be destroyed, says Professor Jiang.

Kong Fanxiang at the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology is more direct in condemning the idea: “Obviously this is a strange idea (of building a dam between the Yangtze River and Lake Poyang). I don’t think it will work, either to solve the problem, or improve the situation in Lake Poyang,” he said in an interview with Chinese Science News.

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i From 2010 to 2013, impoundment started on September 10; in 2009 and 2006, impoundment started on September 15 and September 19; while in 2007 and 2008, impoundment started on September 25 and September 28 respectively. ii Legally, both companies and private individuals are required to have official permits to dredge sand. In reality, some do and others do not. Local governments turn a blind eye to illegal sand dredging in favour of the promotion of job growth and local GDP. iii The Changjiang Water Conservancy Net (Changjiang shuili wang) run by the -based Changjiang Water Resources Commission (CWRC) reported on November 12, 2013: “The Three Gorges Dam successfully filled the water level to 175 metres or its NPL at 2 p.m. on November 11, 2013, indicating the completion of the task of impounding of the reservoir, which started on September 10 this year.” iiii This reporter is using “Master” or “Lao” either because Mr. Fang does not want to be identified in the press by his full name, or as a mark of respect for someone who is older and experienced, or who possesses special skills.

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