China landslide risk will uproot many

BEIJING (Reuters) – China will relocate 20,000 people living near the Three Gorges Dam by the end of this year and five times that number by 2017 because of landslide risks caused by the world's biggest hydropower project. State news agency Xinhua said on Wednesday that preparations had started to move a fifth of the residents of Badong County in Hubei province by the end of 2012, with homes already under threat as a result of “constant landslides.” It said 550 million yuan ($87.3m.)in funds has already been spent on relocation costs.

Separately, Liu Yuan, an official with the Ministry of Land and Resources, said in a radio interview on Tuesday that another 100,000 people still had to be moved from the region in three to five years because of landslide risks.

Around 1.3 million people were originally displaced to make way for the 185-meter Three Gorges dam completed in 2006 and a reservoir that stretches more than 600 kilometers along the middle reaches of the Yangtze river and which reached the maximum depth of 175 meters in October 2010.