China cracks down on illegal hydro projects

LESHAN, China: In a mountain village in southwest China’s Sichuan province, authorities have demolished seven small dam projects this year along a river to clear illegal developments in a new nature reserve.

The demolition is part of a nationwide programme to close hundreds of tiny and often ramshackle dams and turbines and bring order to China’s massive hydroelectric power sector after years of unconstrained construction.

The dams sat on an unnamed tributary of the fierce and floodprone Dadu river, which feeds into the Yangtze, Asia’s largest and longest river, where the Government says the ‘‘irregular development’’ of thousands of small hydropower projects has wrecked the ecology.

But green groups say the campaign will not necessarily save the environment because it will not affect big state hydro stations, which they say have caused the most damage.

On the Zhougong river, another tributary, farmer Zhang (70) reckons big dams have devastated the ecology. He said changes in the Zhougong’s flow and temperature had devastated the local fish population, and one species had been wiped out.

China triggered an aggressive damming programme 20 years ago as it looked for ways to develop industry and bring electricity to poor rural regions not connected to the power grid.

Investors rushed in and environmentalists likened the frenzy to the construction of backyard steel smelters during the illfated 1958 Great Leap Forward programme that aimed to industrialise China’s agrarian society.

Now, the Government wants to reverse course and the environmentally conscious leadership must decide how much of China’s 100GW of smallscale capacity needs to close, while also protecting expensive state investments.

‘‘Hydropower was a good thing at the time, but as is often the case in China, it turns into a swarm and we basically lose control,’’ said Chen Guojie, a hydropower expert with the China Academy of Sciences in Chengdu, central China.

Sichuan underlines the case. Total hydropower reached more than 75GW in 2017, greater than the total in most Asian countries. It was also more than double the capacity of the province’s power grid, meaning lots of wasted power.

China’s official hydropower capacity was about 340GW at the end of June and around a third of that is considered small hydropower, projects of less than 50MW. China’s overall power capacity, including coal and nuclear plants, is 1740GW.

In June, state auditors identified 24,100 small hydropower projects in the 11 regions along the Yangtze. A month later, Beijing ordered the regions to ban new construction and ‘‘rectify’’ illegal projects, although it remains uncertain how many will be decommissioned. — Reuters