The Yangtze is finally tamed

JIANLI, China - The Yangtze River, flowing more than 3,900 miles from the mountains of Tibet through fertile plains in Hubei province and on to the East China Sea, was playing its traditional life-giving role last week, feeding the Chinese economy as it has for centuries.

As barges laden with goods churned upstream and irrigation canals branched out like capillaries, the river's even flow seemed in many ways remarkable. Other rivers in China have swollen out of their banks, with floods killing about 700 people and causing an estimated $7 billion in damage to buildings and farmland over the last two weeks.

The Yangtze's flow across the Hubei flatlands marks the latest chapter in China's struggle to control its waters. Since before written history began, the river has alternated between giving life to China's farmers through irrigation and killing them through seasonal flooding. The cycle always seemed beyond man's control. But this year, for the first time, the mammoth Three Gorges Dam, 220 miles upstream from Hubei province, was used to regulate the river, releasing limited amounts of water and trapping the excess of summer rains in a huge reservoir.

The engineers who have run the dam since it was finished a year ago said the 606-foot-high structure, the world's largest flood-control and hydroelectric barrier, passed its first real test as the waters peaked Tuesday. Boat traffic was halted as engineers let up to 48,000 cubic meters per second rush through 18 giant sluices. But the rest of the backed-up water stayed on the other side of the 7,575-foot-wide concrete barrier, in a pool stretching back more than 100 miles between steep gorges.

Hubei provincial officials predicted that the riverbed could handle the limited flow as it headed downstream to the Yangtze's mouth just north of Shanghai. The water level at Shashi, about 170 miles downstream from the dam, peaked at the 43-meter danger level, they reported; by Wednesday, it had started to decline.

"The biggest flood crest on the Yangtze River this year has passed through the Three Gorges Dam, and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze were protected," Yuan Jie, the engineer in charge of water flow, told the official New China News Agency Wednesday. "The crest was tamed in the reservoir."

Zhuan Xingjia, a laborer who works on a dredging barge docked at Jianli, hailed the news and took comfort in the calm waters around him, but he cautioned that the Yangtze has not always been so subdued.

"The dam has done us some good; this year is nothing like '98," he said. "You should have seen it then," he added, gesturing at the dike that protects low-lying Jianli suburbs. "It was up to there."

That was one of at least four large-scale floods - in 1931, 1935, 1954 and 1998 - that have devastated riverside towns and farms since complete meteorological records have been kept. But in addition to the record-setting outpourings, thousands of lesser floods have taken their annual toll for centuries, making the battle to control the Yangtze an important part of Chinese culture and history from its earliest days.

The Three Gorges project has been heavily criticized since construction began 14 years ago. More than a million people were displaced to make way for the reservoir. Conservationists asserted that the huge backup of water would affect the climate and become a cesspool for Chongqing, a huge city 250 miles upstream. Some critics worried that, because of flaws, the concrete construction could give way under pressure.

In its first flood-prevention operation, however, the dam drew only praise from those living downstream. "The dam has done us a lot of good," said Wu Jinghua, who was lunching with his wife, niece and nephew at a Jianli amusement park 500 yards from the riverbank. "We haven't felt a thing from the flooding so far."