The following is the translation of an excerpt from Li Chen's "The effect of the Sanmenxia Dam on the environment, retrospects and criticisms," People's Yellow River, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 66-72, Feb 1991.
Resettlement was conducted for the Sanmenxia Dam reservoir below an altitude of 335 m
according to the original investigative report. The reservoir would displace 310,000 person, affecting 855,900 mu of farm land, 15,000 mu of orchards and economic woods, and 288,600 housing units of domesticated caves. 7 townships would have to be resettled.
From 1957 to 1961, resettlement had basically been complete. The majority of the displaced peresons originated from Shaanxi province, with 196,400 persons, among whom about 100,000 were resettled on the dry tableland north of the Wei River valley with productivity low. The annual average income was only 30-80 yuan per person. Water was in shortage and must be brought in from a distance of 3-4 km away. Consequently there was strong demands for relocation.
In particular, 39,300 persons from Shaanxi and Henan were being resettled in the frontier land in Ningxia and Gansu in 1957. Due to hardship in adjusting to the local condition and in earning a living, this group of people was brought back to the reservoir area in 1962 to wait for new resettlement plan with government approval.
As the reservoir was being filled to its high-water level, inundation and cliff slides caused more people to be displaced. According to a 1982 study, 93,000 persons were displaced from places with altitude above 335 m. The total number of persons displaced from the reservoir area reached 403,700 persons.
The resettlement population in 1984, 30 years after the ..., increased to 605,100 persons from natural birth, among whom 430,000 came from Shaanxi constituting 71% of the total, for whom the living conditions remained low.
According to a 1985 study conducted on the resettlement population in Shaanxi, it was reported that 30% of them occupied land of very poor natural quality, among the dry, non-irrigable tableland region, 7% in semi-dry land, and 13% in low gully land. Only half of the resettlement population was given land with irrigation potential.
According to the present data, over half of the resettled population still live in relative poverty, with average annual income of 175 yuan and grain allocation of 190 kg per person. In particular, about 1/3 of the resettlement population live below poverty level, with average annual income of 130 yuan and grain allocation of 167 kg.
In May 1985, the Central Government proclaimed that the government would release 300,000 mu of farm land from the reservoir area from holdings by the military units and government-run farms (over 50,000 mu) to resettle 150,000 displaced persons (on average 2 mu per person including living spaces), and allocate a special fund of 0.2 billion yuan. However, the special fund was intended only for establishing utility and township infrastructure, and not for building living units for the resettled people, who must provide for their own moving, transportation, and building cost. For the large majority of the displaced persons, they lacked the finance resource to build new living quaters, and to this day, 90% of them still lived in temporary shelters.
The actual amount of land turned over was 230,000 mu, not the promised 300,000 mu allocation. Furthermore, over half of the land belongs low-lying sites which are threatened by floods and water-logging, or along the edge of the rivers which suffer from cliff slides and erosion. Less than half of the actual allocated land is of favorable condition.
Many problems remain unsolved, such as those related to improving capital investment, administrative organization, poverty relief, safeguard from floods, and education. Resettlement therefore creates a severe social impact on the welfare of the nation.
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While the resettlement program for the construction of the Sanmenxia Dam was considered to have fallen short of being adequate, the resettlement program for the Xiaolangdi Dam, which is being constructed just 130 km downstream from Sanmenxia, is called "a model for the future" by the World Bank.