A Visit to the Earthquake Dam?

As James Fallows mentions here there are reports in the Western media this week that the big earthquake in Sichuan Province last year may have been caused or accelerated by the new Zipingpu dam and reservoir near the earthquake epicenter. This angle on the story hasn't been widely covered here in China with the exception of a Chinese news report that focuses not on the reported cause of the earthquake, but rather on the Western media "stirring up trouble" with its focus on the theory. The translation of the Chinese report is here from Mutant Palm.

The same day this story hit the Western media a project I'm working on took me to the Zipingpu Dam and in the nearby town of Yingxiu that was devastated by the earthquake. Set in a beautiful mountainous region with clear rushing streams this tourist town lost half of its 14,000 residents to the quake last May. At the center of the town is the school which collapsed on its students - killing hundreds of children.

There's been a lot of progress in the last few months in cleaning up the debris and repairing the roads leading into the mountains from the city of Dujiangyan but Yingxiu is still in bad shape. Toppled and ruined buildings are everywhere and debris is piled high. Disinfectant trucks have to spray the area every day because so many bodies remain under the collapsed buildings. The survivors seem to be getting on with their lives but the psychological scars must be there. Nearly every family lost some of its members. Children lost their school friends and siblings. The sadness is still palpable. It would be doubly hard to find out that a man-made dam may have triggered the whole tragedy.