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comment by b_b
b_b  ·  4236 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Thousands being moved from China's Three Gorges - again

I remember reading years ago that the original consulting firm (Canadian, I believe) implored the government to not build the dam higher than about 160m. In typical totalitarian state fashion, they decided they could defy the rules of gravity and it now stands at a maximum of ~180m, or an extra ~28-29psi (by my back of the napkin calculation--a lot of weigh when integrated over those hundreds of square miles). Hopefully, the initial study had a safety factor of about 10, knowing full well that the government would not listen to whatever they had to say.