A fascinating article by The Telegraph about the possibility that the new Zipingpu Dam actually helped to trigger the horrendous Sichuan quake.

The 511ft-high Zipingpu dam holds 315 million tonnes of water and lies just 550 yards from the fault line, and three miles from the epicentre, of the Sichuan earthquake.

Now scientists in China and the United States believe the weight of water, and the effect of it penetrating into the rock, could have affected the pressure on the fault line underneath, possibly unleashing a chain of ruptures that led to the quake.

In fact, there is some evidence of this occuring elsewhere in the past with the article noting that earthquakes did occur with the completion of the Hoover Dam, but no where near the scale of the Sichuan earthquake.

The idea is very contentious and not surprisingly (and unfortunately) the Chinese government is refusing to allow studies about whether the dam may have actually caused the earthquake for the obvious reason that this would firstly place the blame on the Chinese government (which is never at fault of course) and stop the development of other dams around China that would prevent the much needed expansion of electrical power.