Dam cleanup team helps protect Yangtze

Removing floating debris from river safeguards environment at world's largest hydropower project

For the past 17 years, Zhou Gonghu and his team have been the Yangtze River's final guardians above the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydropower project.

They are in charge of cleaning up floating objects in the section of the river that flows down to the dam.

They have removed more than 45,000 metric tons of floating objects from the river as it passes through Hubei province's Zigui county, safeguarding the dam and the environment.

Zhou, 61, said all his ancestors lived along the Yangtze, so he has a special feeling for the "mother river".

After graduating from high school in 1980 at the age of 18, he decided to join the army to realize his childhood dream of becoming a soldier. He received seven awards for good performance before ending his time in the army in 1985 to return to his hometown and work for a local company.

But the company went bankrupt in 2000 and he was laid off. Two years later, he founded a construction team that allowed him to earn around 100,000 yuan ($14,000) a year, a high income for villagers in the county.

As the dam started to store water for generating electricity, the water flow slowed and a large quantity of floating objects circled around the reservoir.

The local government decided to organize a team to remove them before they reached the dam.