Dammed if you do, dammed if you don't

When the necessity and benefits of supplying water to millions of Chinese outweighs the risks, who gets to make those decisions and the responsibility?

With the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina's effects on the New Orleans' levees still fresh on our minds, comes this New Zealand Herald reporters' first hand view.

"Environmentalists view the Three Gorges dam in China, the world's biggest, as a monstrous natural catastrophe waiting to unleash itself on the hundreds of millions of people who live near the Yangtze River. The Chinese Government is fiercely proud of the dam, which is due to open next month, saying it will stop the river flooding, provide much-needed clean hydro-electric power and give ships from booming coastal cities better access to central China."

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