China has announced new plans to confront environmental and geological problems around the Three Gorges Dam, even as a landslide in the region on Tuesday killed one construction worker, injured a second and trapped two others beneath a mound of fallen earth.  Chinese officials are facing growing questions about the dam project, which has been dogged for years by controversy and discord. Water pollution, soil erosion and landslides are becoming recurrent issues as rising water inundates more land in the reservoir behind the mammoth dam.

On Tuesday night, state-run news outlets announced a host of new environmental measures from the Three Gorges Project Committee of the State Council, the highest executive body in the Chinese government. Specifics were scarce, but the announcements described “seven projects” focused on guaranteeing safe drinking water, curbing municipal and industrial dumping, and instituting an environmental monitoring system.

The proposal appears to be the same basic plan that was discussed privately in late September by select officials and experts at a closed forum about the dam. At that meeting, Wang Xiaofeng, director of the Three Gorges Project Committee, described seven environmental pilot projects that would constitute a “seven plus one” plan to “create a model for a friendly society and environment where man and nature coexist harmoniously.”

But according to a transcript of his September speech obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Wang also suggested that financing for any new environmental initiatives had not yet been approved. “My office is making an effort to push ahead with a ‘seven plus one’ special plan,” Mr. Wang said, adding that he hoped that the State Council and regional government “will support it.”

Mr. Wang also said then that future environmental protection efforts in the Three Gorges region must focus on curbing industrial and municipal pollution into tributaries and bays of the reservoir behind the dam. Those discharges have caused algal blooms that have contaminated drinking water in certain areas, Mr. Wang said.

Other high priorities included improved efforts at water and sewage treatment; creating ecological buffer zones along the shoreline of the reservoir; and improving treatment and monitoring of geological problems like landslides in the steep mountains above the reservoir. He said treating geological hazards was vital “to ensure the lives and property of the people in the reservoir region.”

Tuesday’s account from Xinhua, the official news agency, listed many of the same priorities, if with fewer details, but also cast the broader environmental situation in a more measured tone. Mr. Wang was described as saying that the dam’s environmental impact “has been less damaging than feared.”

Xinhua also stated that the environmental issues were consistent with — or, in some cases, less severe than — predictions made in a 1991 government feasibility report. Xinhua said a new official environmental assessment of the project found “positive impacts of the gigantic dam should on the whole outweigh the negatives.” That new report also said benefits like flood prevention and power generation would not be impaired.

The dam, the largest in the world, was completed last year, though the hydropower complex connected with it will not be finished until 2009. Chinese officials have scheduled a news conference for Thursday to discuss the situation at Three Gorges.

Meanwhile, another landslide in the region served as a reminder of the spate of environmental problems. Xinhua reported that the slide happened Tuesday in Badong County, a sloped region along the shoreline of the reservoir. A cascade of rocks and mud smashed into a construction crew and crushed four workers. No information was provided about the two men still trapped under the rubble.

(Por Jim Yardley, NYT, 22/11/2007)