<Cut to close up on Anchor with a deeply concerned expression on his face as he drops the pitch of his voice for dramatic effect.> Why is the world suddenly concerned? The springs, rivers, and lakes that allowed communities to develop in the past are disappearing due to climatic changes and overuse. In the past, dams were built or deeper wells were driven to find water. Once the aquifers were depleted, communities around the world became dependent on surface water supplies to fill the gap. The changes in the worldís weather have dried up the ultimate source of life in many areas, making governments wonder if survival for their populations is possible under the harsh conditions of eternal drought.”
<Cut back to the Anchor, who continues, frowning because Chinese security forces have seized the illegal videos that his correspondents were trying to smuggle back into the U.S. He will have to make the report without benefit of pictures to back up the veracity of his report. The story gives Dan the impression that that he has moved back in time and is reporting on radio. The Chinese government’s actions have irritated him, and he intends to give them no quarter in his report.> ” In China, the Three Gorges dam constricting the Yangtze river has caused an eco-catastrophe; the area behind the dam has turned into the world’s biggest cesspool. In late nineteen-ninety-seven, China began construction of the world’s largest hydroelectric plant, sinking the equivalent of twelve billion dollars into the four hundred mile long reservoir which permanently submerged approximately one hundred and fifty thousand acres, including fifteen hundred factories, four hundred villages, at least one hundred sixty towns, sixteen archeological sites, over eight hundred ancient Chinese temples and required the resettlement of one point three million people. The result has been to create a huge reservoir that stores the effluent of the bulk of Chinese industry along the Yangtze. All along the river, factories owned by the Chinese military and staffed with political slaves provided by the Chinese Court system have dumped tens of thousands of tons of noxious effluent into the Yangtze. Reports are filtering out of China that the groundwater surrounding the area behind the dam has become saturated with toxins and that the people in the area of the dam are dying by the thousands. We also have an unconfirmed report that the turbines of the massive hydroelectric plant have been etched away by the corrosive water and have become unusable. Satellite photos purchased from the French Satellite Company, ISpy, have revealed that the entire area appears to be without power. Lights are out all over the Yangtze valley, including those factories that are operated twenty-four hours a day. I’m sorry to say that we have no footage of the event as the Chinese government has seized the video tapes from our correspondents in direct violation of the International Speech and Press Accords signed by the Chinese government in nineteen-ninety-nine.”
Anita grew bored with the news program and turned it off. She had a report from work to write anyway after she made dinner for her husband and herself. If her husband hadn’t been so helpless in the kitchen, she could have had him start TV dinners for them before she came home. As it was, he was more than capable of burning water. (Anita had actually witnessed him giving water a burned taste by putting ice in a pot one day when the city water board had temporarily turned off the water to perform maintenance on the supply pipes. When he had turned the heat on the gas burner on high to heat it make coffee – in minutes, the surface of ice had scorched, giving the resultant coffee a burned taste. From that moment on, he had been permanently barred from the kitchen except as a spectator. ) Occasionally, she would let him go out and pick up some burgers for them out of pure exhaustion, but her appreciation for the art of good food precluded fast food take-out more than once a month. Like a mother with a babe in arms, she was anchored to the house to see that he was properly fed..
