True, but this CAN be a political nightmare if they do this. As I have said earlier, you are basically picking winners and playing god on who would be impacted, and they have populations who were there for centuries if not longer in the same region (villagers), long before governments were overthrown every several hundred years let alone the in power today.One thing is for sure they failed to track weather and to lower water levels before heavy flooding in upper level.
This is extremely important in areas that get heavy rains and those surrounded by mountains where snow melts and water level can rise quickly. The dam had to have emergency water discharging provisions in its design and tested on regular basis.
It is not like in the US where most of the lands ownerships are recent and you can just tell the owners they have to move and sell due to eminent domain. A lot of the attitudes are "the clan" own this place since several hundred years ago, even if some of them die in a flood there will be remaining members to rebuild the place and carry on the family name. The emotional baggage to sell the ancestor lands and relocate is huge (think Native American reservation).
A couple years ago they flood a low ground near Beijing. It was a heavy but understandable decision because common sense would say it is better to flood 600k villagers than a capital of a nation that house 22M. But this is not as black and white between a 200k rural town vs a 2M medium size city.