Beijing ? Chinese officials on Thursday refuted reports that the massive Three Gorges Dam trigged deadly landslides, part of an apparent attempt to play down the environmental impact of the giant water management project.

“No one has died, no one has been hurt” as a result of the dam, said Tong Chongde, a spokesman for the Three Gorges Project Construction Committee overseeing the dam.

On Tuesday, a landslide close to the dam killed one worker at a nearby railway tunnel injured another and left two missing, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Xinhua also reported, however, that there was no evidence of a connection between the dam and the landslide, which left a 50-yard gash in the side of the mountain and a tangle of metal at the bottom. Xinhua said landslides are common in the area where the accident occurred “which is sited on brittle terrain along the Yangtze River.”

Tong’s comments follow a report in the state-run China Daily newspaper quoting his office’s director as saying that problems along the dam’s 410-mile-long reservoir were no worse than expected and that no major geological problems had been recorded in the area since water levels rose to more than 500 feet last year.

“The impact has not gone beyond the scope predicted in a 1991 feasibility report. In some aspects, it is not as severe as predicted,” Wang Xiaofeng, director of the dam’s construction committee, was quoted as saying in the newspaper.

The comments marked a stark reversal for Wang, who, along with other officials, has said China will face a catastrophe if it fails to stop riverbank erosion and other environmental problems caused by the dam, the world’s largest hydropower project.

Begun in 1993, the dam was seen as the fruition of a century-old dream to harness the Yangtze, the world’s third largest river, for electric power and to control flooding.

But Beijing has been doing damage control since accounts emerged of the September meeting, where participants warned of increasing landslides and pollution, possibly requiring the relocations of millions of more people in the reservoir area – issues critics also raised during the dam’s planning and construction when they were quashed by Beijing.

Seismic activity has increased as water pours into formerly dry slopes composed of rock, soil and sediment, some of it highly porous. That is causing splits and fissures, often deep below the surface, weakening hillsides and causing soil and shale to come loose.