Beijing (AsiaNews) – China's huge Three Gorges Dam hydro-power project could spark a "catastrophe" unless accumulating environmental threats are quickly defused, senior officials and experts have warned. The dam, which is located in Hubei province in south-western China, is the world's biggest hydro-electric project. Inaugurated in 2006 it began generating electricity in 2003.

Despite criticism from environmentalists the project was greeted as the greatest engineering wonder in the world, a victory of man over nature. The dam can in fact generate 85 TWh for a country thirsty for energy and serve as a barrier against seasonal flooding that threaten lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

Even senior dam officials are now warning that areas around the dam were paying a heavy, potentially calamitous environmental cost

Wang Xiaofeng, director of the administrative office in charge of building the dam, said it was time to act quickly and decisively.

“We absolutely cannot relax our guard against ecological and environmental security problems sparked by the Three Gorges Project,” Xinhua quoted Wang as saying. “We cannot win passing economic prosperity at the cost of the environment."

Wang cited a litany of threats, especially erosion and landslides on steep hills around the dam, conflicts over land shortages and "ecological deterioration caused by irrational development".

Research by Shanghai’s East China Normal University shows that the dam is harming farmland down river because it is holding back millions of tonnes of loam which normally fertilises the soil.

But there are also problems upriver where 1.2 million people have been resettled by force to give way to the dam.

Here land is scarce and not very productive forcing evacuees to constantly wrestle with local authorities for help. Landslides are frequent and could kill residents of new villages.

“Regular geological disasters are a severe threat to the lives of residents around the dam,” senior engineer Huang Xuebin said at a meeting of experts and officials.

Huang described landslides into the dam waters making waves dozens of metres high that crash into surround shores, creating even more damage.

The dam is about 2.3 kilometres (1.4 miles) long, and 185 meters (616 ft) high.

It is the brainchild of former Prime Minister Li Peng whose son, Li Xiaopeng, heads Huaneng International, a power development company.