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For China, Three Gorges is just a start

Energy-thirsty China, already involved in the world's largest hydropower project, will block a river in the southwest for a 24.3 billion yuan (US$2.9 billion) power plant, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The Longtan power plant, the largest in the country after the Three Gorges Dam, would have installed capacity of 4,200 megawatts, the agency said.

Workers would stem the mighty Hongshui river in the southwestern province of Guangxi early in November, it said.

"The blocking will be a milestone, marking the turning point from the basic digging period to dam-building period," Xinhua quoted Long Xianjin, deputy general manager of the Longtan Hydropower Development Co, as saying.

Some 6,000 residents in the dam area would be relocated, it said.

China's surging economy is gasping for electricity. Consumption has been growing at about 16 percent annually, but blackouts have plagued more than half China's provinces this year.

Engineers blocked the Yangtze at the Three Gorges Dam in June, starting to fill the reservoir for the US$25 billion project that is a point of national pride but which critics fear will become an environmental nightmare.

The project began in 1993 and is expected to be completed by 2009.
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