Call for Hydropower Dam Safety Reassessment

We the undersigned wholeheartedly support the Chinese scientists and scholars’ petition and wish to join them in putting forward this petition again for the Chinese people overseas, the concerned Southeast Asian people living downstream of the Yunnan seismic faults and giant dams, the concerned world citizens on behalf of the millions people and their descendants - that the Chinese should set up a joint investigation team, which would include experts and scholars who have done long-term research in this field of study, to carry out the following tasks as soon as possible:

1) Re-examine the seismic intensity originally set for each of all large-scale hydro dams in the southwest of China;

2) Re-examine the risks posed by the cascades of dams and reservoirs to the downstream areas in the event of earthquakes;

3) Conduct further studies to determine the risk that reservoirs could induce seismic activity (RIS) in geologically unstable regions;

4) Make public the results of the re-examination and information generated;

5) Prepare special emergency plan for the regions, where hydro dams have already been built, based on the conclusions obtained by the joint investigation team; and, at the same time, make necessary adjustments to official plans to massively and intensively develop southwest China’s water resources and construct cascades of hydro dams throughout rivers in southwest China in keeping with the principles of planning and environmental assessment.

6) Temporarily suspend the approval of big hydro dams in geologically unstable areas in southwest China before carrying out all the above tasks.