Claims

In July 2024, heavy rains caused the water level in the Three Gorges Dam to rise to 161,000 meters—the highest for any July on record—and water was discharged through nine flood gates despite which severe floods persisted along the Yangtze, making it the biggest flooding event since historical records began.

Potential dam failure would put the lives of more than 400 million people living around the Yangtze River in danger.

Failure of the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric power station, would cause massive power outages affecting Central and Eastern China and Guangdong Province.

Dam failure would threaten the very existence of major cities downstream such as Wuhan and Shanghai and would prove catastrophic for the Chinese economy.

Ensuring the Three Gorges Dam's safety remains a top priority for authorities, though the complexity of managing such a massive infrastructure project amidst extreme weather conditions poses ongoing challenges for long-term stability.

The Three Gorges Dam cost China $31 billion to construct and became operational recently, yet experts are concerned it could collapse, which would be extraordinary given the recent investment and timeline.

The primary purposes of the Three Gorges Dam construction were flood control, hydroelectric power generation, and improved navigation along the Yangtze River.

The Three Gorges Dam received its largest flood peak in August 2020 when torrential rains increased dam inflows to alarmingly high levels, though the Chinese government has denied any danger and the dam passed power generation and flood control tests in November 2020.

Should the Three Gorges Dam break, a tsunami-like wave from the breach could wipe out millions of acres of farmland, potentially make low-lying cities along the Yangtze banks uninhabitable, and result in a staggering death toll.

The Three Gorges Dam was built as a critical strategic asset to leverage China's water resources and address multiple pressing issues including flood control, power generation, and navigation.

China has approximately 94,000 dams in jeopardy, representing a systemic infrastructure crisis affecting the nation's water management capability.

China built 23,000 miles of high-speed rail in the time California failed to build 500 miles, demonstrating the speed advantage of reduced voice mechanisms, though at the cost of individual rights protection and potential for abusiveness.

US regulatory and structural barriers to power infrastructure deployment—including skilled labor shortages, regulatory delays at federal, state, and local levels, and the control of power distribution by regulated utility monopolies (exemplified by California's utilities)—make rapid power addition difficult in contrast to China's capacity to build an entire US-equivalent power grid in seven years.

The United States faces a massive power supply deficit of 63 gigawatts to meet the electricity demands of data center construction projects already under construction or in advanced planning, based on satellite photography, construction permits, and development tracking of every data center site by site, while only 44 gigawatts of new power generation capacity is being added even with aggressive assumptions about renewables, batteries, and combined-cycle gas and nuclear reactors that are planned or being installed.

Trains are a solved technology that work effectively in Europe and Japan, suggesting California's inability to build high-speed rail reflects policy and regulatory dysfunction, not unsolved technological problems.

The Big Dig, Second Avenue Subway, and similar major infrastructure projects becoming unexpectedly expensive is not an anomaly but rather 'how they go now'—large government projects routinely cost far more than predicted.

The UK is also unable to build new high-speed rail projects, showing that infrastructure dysfunction is not uniquely American, though this does not change Klein's frustration about it.

China announced construction of the Mouti hydro dam, which will be the largest hydro dam in the world and three times larger than the Three Gorges Dam; such projects cannot be completed in Canada or the US due to government bureaucracy, as demonstrated by the Labrador dam that came online years late and billions over budget.

China has embraced the age of electrification more thoroughly than any other country; the Mouti dam project is testimony to this commitment and reveals the 'catch up' work remaining for the West.

The Second Avenue Subway in New York has the highest cost per kilometer of rail ever recorded in human history, with next phases projected to cost even more, proving that regulatory and planning failures, not funding scarcity, prevent rail construction.

Tech companies are paying to restart mothballed traditional nuclear fission electrical generation systems because they anticipate massive future power demands and recognize that traditional utilities won't make required capital investments.

The US power transmission grid is medieval, fragmented into separate regional grids with poor interconnection (Texas had its own grid during the 2021 freeze and could not receive electricity from other regions), and insufficiently maintained; China has developed sophisticated ultra-high-voltage DC transmission while the US lags.

Infrastructure projects are being neglected despite obvious needs—e.g., leaking tunnels under the Hudson that are over 100 years old and critical to regional transportation, while resources are spent on peripheral projects like Second Avenue Subway extensions.

During peak operation, 1 million gallons of wastewater are treated at Stickney every single minute.

Joe Cummings is the operations manager at Stickney and has been working there for over 15 years.

The process at wastewater treatment plants recreates what happens organically in nature, but condenses what would normally take several weeks into just a few hours.

The remaining wastewater after primary settling passes through secondary treatment tanks where air is pumped into a tank of carefully maintained microorganisms that consume pollutants and other harmful substances in the water, with oxygen allowing bacteria to neutralize compounds such as ammonia and turn them into less toxic forms of nitrogen.

Stickney is located on the outskirts of Chicago and at 413 acres is one of the largest wastewater-treatment plants in the world, processing all sewage from roughly 2.3 million nearby residents.

Everything that arrives at Stickney will eventually be transformed into clean water, fertilizer, and energy to power the plant, and when at full capacity the facility can handle 1.4 billion gallons of wastewater in a single day, equivalent to over 2,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

The Stickney facility does not produce drinking water, but treated water is returned to waterways much cleaner than it arrived.

Flushable wipes that enter the treatment system never break down over time; samples examined at Stickney had been in the system for roughly four years without breaking down.

Sludge is mixed with a polymer and spun at high speeds inside centrifuges to further separate solids from liquids during the biosolids production process.

In the separation process at treatment plants, solid material (sludge) settles to the bottom while liquid material flows off to the river system, and the solids are further treated to produce biosolids cake, which is an earthy material good for use as fertilizer.

Coarse screens at wastewater treatment plants filter out larger objects like garbage and plastics, and flushable wipes are a particular item that treatment plant staff see frequently and must manually remove.

Flushable wipes do not break down in the sewer system or inside the treatment plant; instead, they catch on jagged surfaces, form into large blocks, and require manual removal by treatment plant staff.

Once trapped at coarse screens, debris is scraped by a rake onto a conveyor belt, transferred to a dumpster, and ultimately transported to a landfill.

The staff at Stickney treatment plant do not mind what their job entails, contrary to what most people might assume about working in wastewater treatment.

Rotating slats in aerated grit tanks skim off scum floating on the surface and scrape up sludge from the bottom of the tanks, with the sludge then sent to digesters and centrifuges to become nutrient-rich biosolids fertilizer.

The primary goal of Stickney Water Reclamation Plant and all wastewater treatment plants is to protect the water environment.

The final settling tanks at wastewater treatment plants are the last stop in treating wastewater, where solids and liquids further separate, remaining solids are removed, and treated wastewater is returned to the river.

The treated wastewater discharged from Stickney must meet specific quality standards set by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to ensure it does not harm the environment or pose a risk to the public.

Samples from treated wastewater are analyzed every day in the Stickney laboratory to ensure that treated wastewater is safe to be released.

Raw sewage consists of 99.9% clean water and 0.1% solids, as demonstrated by laboratory samples at Stickney.

Mixed liquor captured and treated in aeration tanks separates into solids and liquid when allowed to settle, with solid separation visible within minutes of settling.

The liquid that comes off the top of settled wastewater samples is what goes back into waterways after treatment, and the solids are sent for further treatment, with the final water being clean-looking though not drinkable.

After centrifugation and digestion, biosolids cake is produced, and on an average day, Stickney produces over 1,000 wet tons of biosolids cake.

Over the course of a normal day at Stickney, enough railcars are filled with biosolids to contain 1,000 to 2,000 wet tons of product.

Railcars transport biosolids from Stickney a few miles away on a private railroad, where the biosolids are dumped into a lagoon for additional treatment and drying before being used as fertilizer on farm fields, golf courses, parks, and recreational facilities.

Because of its size, Stickney performs many treatment operations in-house, including an entire laboratory that does monitoring and research on biosolids applications.

Stickney operates a greenhouse where biosolids are mixed with soils in different proportions and tested on many different species to determine the optimum use for the biosolid product.