The country’s Ministry of Environmental Protection has ordered construction to stop and remedial actions undertaken on the projects, which are being built in the middle reach of the Jinsha (‘Jinshajiang’) river, in Yunnan province.

The Ludila project is to have an installed capacity of 2160MW. The total budget for the project is approximately RMB17.8B (US$2.6B).

Longkaikou is being built with an installed capacity of 1700MW project and it has a development budget of approximately RMB11.9B (US$1.74B).

The Ministry said that on the projects the river closures were undertaken earlier this year without approvals of environmental impact assessments (EIA). It ordered a stop to their main dam construction and demanded that effective measures be taken to ensure safety of the downstream cofferdams in the flood season. Other measures to satisfy the EIA were also ordered.