Why is the three gorges dam bad?

Answer 1

the three gorges dam will destroy many of towns and villages once it is completed

Also:

• Approximately 1.2 million people were forcibly relocated by the Chinese government in order to facilitate the construction of the dam and subsequent submerging of the areas where they once lived and worked - with as little compensation of as little as 50 yuan, or $7 a month
• The dam and reservoir span at least 2 major faults and the pressure from the water is expected to trigger multiple earthquakes in the future - the only question is how many and how severe.
• Even partially filling the dam has caused multiple landslides - including once case causing 20 meter waves that killed 14 people and in another case burying a bus on a highway killing 30 people.
• Whole villages of people relocated to make room for the dam will have to move a second time because of the landslides and tremors,
• Biodiversity is threatened as the dam floods some habitats, reduces water flow to others, and alters weather patterns. Economic development has spurred deforestation and pollution in surrounding provinces in central China, endangering at least 57 plant species, including the Chinese dove tree and the dawn redwood. The reservoir created by the Three Gorges dam threatens to flood the habitats of those species along with over 400 others. China is home to 10 percent of the world's vascular plants (those with stems, roots and leaves) and biologists estimate that half of China's animal and plant species, including the beloved giant panda and the Chinese sturgeon, are found no where else in the world. The Three Gorges area alone accounts for 20 percent of Chinese seed plants-more than 6,000 species.
• The dam further imperils delicate fish populations in the Yangtze. Downstream, near where the river empties into the East China Sea, the land around the Yangtze contains some of the densest clusters of human habitation in the world, and overfishing there has already endangered 25 of the river's 177 unique fish species. According to a 2003 letter to Science by Wuhan University ecologist Ping Xie, many of these fish evolved over time with the Yangtze flood plain. As the dam decreases flooding downstream, it will fragment the network of lakes around the middle as well as lower the Yangtze's water level, making it difficult for the fish to survive. The project has already contributed to the decline of the baiji dolphin, which is so rare that it is considered functionally extinct.
• When officials unveiled plans for the dam, they touted its ability to prevent floods downstream. Now, the dam seems to be causing the opposite problem, spurring drought in central and eastern China. In January, the China Daily (the country's largest English-language newspaper) reported that the Yangtze had reached its lowest level in 142 years-stranding dozens of ships along the waterway in Hubei and Jiangxi provinces. To make matters worse, China is now plowing ahead with a controversial $62-billion scheme to transfer water from the Yangtze to northern China, which is even more parched, through a network of tunnels and canals to be completed by 2050.
• At the mouth of the Yangtze residents of Shanghai, China's largest city, are experiencing water shortages. The decreased flow of fresh water also means that saltwater from the East China Sea now creeps farther upstream. This, in turn, seems to be causing a rise in the number of jellyfish, which compete with river fish for food and consume their eggs and larvae, thereby threatening native populations that are already dwindling as a result of overfishing. In 2004, a year after the dam was partially filled, scientists observed many of a jellyfish species in the Yangtze that had previously only reached the South China Sea.