YICHANG, China, July 20 (UPI) -- China's Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River is sustaining its stiffest test yet from floodwaters, officials said Tuesday.
The 7,661-foot-wide, 607-foot-high hydro-behemoth, which went online in October 2008, is holding back more than 40 percent of the river's flow, preventing devastating flooding downstream, Xinhua reported. Officials with China Three Gorges Corp. said 70,000 cubic meters of water per second was flowing at the dam's upper reaches, 20,000 cubic meters more than during the 1998 floods that killed 4,150 people and just below the record 70,800 cubic meters of 1981, the Chinese news agency reported.
China has been inundated by days of torrential rains that have filled tributaries feeding into the Yangtze above the dam.
"Compared to 1998, the biggest difference is the Three Gorges Dam," the company's Yuan Jie said. "Without it, thousands of soldiers and rescuers would have been needed to fight the floods."
Another Three Gorges Corp. official, Chen Fei, said the dam's monitoring systems, huge reservoir and management decisions have helped it withstand the "enormous" water pressure.
Corporation Chairman Cao Guangjing noted that while the flow is high right now, "it has not exceeded the designed capacity of 100,000 cubic meters of water per second."
