(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-05-15 13:28

Reservoir dams around the epicenter of Monday's killing earthquake were impacted and damaged, and troops and professionals scrambled Wednesday to plug cracks and open sluices to prevent flooding of already devastated communities.

This Sept. 14, 2007 picture released by GeoEye Satellite Image shows the Zipingpu Dam, upriver from the town of Dujiangyan, Sichuan, China.  [Agencies]

The National Development Reform Commission, the top economic planning body, said the earthquake had damaged 391 dams. It said two of the dams were large ones, 28 were medium-sized and the rest were small ones.

More than 2,000 troops were sent to work on the Zipingpu dam, which lies on about 6 miles up the Minjiang river from the badly damaged city of Dujiangyan in Sichuan.

The Ministry of Water Resources has urged for protection of the Zipingpu reservoir, saying Dujiangyan would be "swamped" if major problems emerged at the dam. The ministry had set up an emergency command center at the dam "to discharge the reservoir's rising waters and guarantee that the damage posed no threat to residents in Dujiangyan and the neighboring Chengdu Plain," which is densely populated.

By late Wednesday, the government pronounced the dam is safe.

"Experts from the Ministry of Water Resources today had a complete and concrete examination on the key sections of the dam," the state television service CCTV said, reading a statement also posted on the Sichuan government Web site. "After that, the expert group said the structure was stable and safe."

He Biao, the director of the Aba Disaster Relief headquarters in northern Sichuan, said there were also concerns over dams closer to Wenchuan, the epicenter which lies about 30 miles northwest of Dujiangyan.

Scores of rivers snake through mountainous Tibetan plateau before descending into the fertile Sichuan basin where they provide critical irrigation. Most have dams along them to help regulate seasonal floods and to provide much needed power.