I'm pretty sure it was a crackpot idea to reverse the river in the first place. Ballsy, brash, and awesome, but still crack-pot.
I still find it unbelievably impressive that the city would rather spend millions of dollars and employ thousands of people digging a channel to reverse the flow of a major river, rather than work to reduce the crazy pollution that the industries were dumping in the river. It's the kind of thing
you'd expect China to do today.