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. Fan Xiao, the chief engineer of the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau in Chengdu, said it was very likely that the construction and filling of the reservoir in 2004 had led to the disaster.

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