China’s Three Gorges Dam is one of the largest ever created. Was it worth it?

Three Gorges Dam is the largest hydropower project ever built.

When construction began in 1994, it was designed not only to generate electricity to propel China’s breakneck economic growth, but also to tame China’s lgest river, shield millions of people from fatal floods and, as a symbol of technological prowess, become a searing point of national pride.

But it hasn’t quite worked out that way.

For a start, the whole project cost 200 billion yuan ($28.6 billion), took nearly two decades to build, and required uprooting more than a million people along the Yangtze River. And while the government promised the dam would be able to protect communities around its immediate downstream against a “once in a century flood,” its efficacy has frequently been questioned.

Those doubts recently resurfaced, as the Yangtze basin saw its heaviest average rainfall in nearly 60 years since June, causing the river and its many tributaries to overflow.