Perhaps one of the most potentially explosive situations is China, which has had water issues for decades, and still hasn’t found a solution to them. Interesting Engineering has an article on their latest effort:
Under the new phase of the project, China aims to drain water from the Three Gorges Dam to the Han River, a tributary of the Yangtze River. Water from the Dam will be sent to the Danjiangkou reservoir at the lower reaches of the Han through the Yinjiangbuhan tunnel, a large open canal.
Compared to the Päijänne in Finland, which stretches a little over 74 miles (120 km), the Yinjiangbuhan tunnel is expected to run over 870 miles (1,400 km), with some of its parts running nearly 3,300 feet (1,000 m) underground as compared to the 426 feet (130 m) that the Finnish tunnel goes into the bedrock.
Expected to cost 60 billion yuan (US$8.9 billion), the tunnel could take up to a decade to be built and, when completed, will take the waters of the Three Gorges Dam all the way to Beijing. The world’s largest tunnel construction will also take engineers through some of the most challenging terrain known to humanity. High pressures in deep rocks, active fault lines, and risks of flooding and excessive heat are some of the challenges in the completion of the project.
Possible unintended consequences? I’m too tired to chase them down, but projects of this size always have undesired, as well as unintended, consequences.
And the thing about China is that, at its heart, it’s an autocratic society. Protests may be met with local corrupt suppression, or, as with Tiananmen Square in 1989, the use of the PLA (national army) to suppress those who threaten the hold of the autocrats on the rein of society, no matter how badly they mismanage it.
I don’t yet see how this ends well.
More, and in-depth, commentary from Pakalolo on Daily Kos here.
