China Dumps Yangtze Dam Plan

China has decided to scrap plans for a huge dam at Tiger Leaping Gorge on the Yangtze River, the Guardian reports. The dam would have left a popular tourist area underwater and forced 100,000 people from their homes. The decision is a rare victory for Chinese green activists, but they face many other battles against big dam projects in the region.

China and its neighbors are hungry for electricity and the hydropower potential of the country's rivers has proved irresistible, despite the risks and the huge cost to the environment. Officials say damming the upper Yangtze will help clean out the industrial filth that contaminates its lower reaches, and are now looking at alternative sites further up the river. (More China stories.)