Abstract: Wood transport by water, which has a long history and has been cheap, available and practicable, is nowadays facing a serious depressing state in both the output and productivity. Whether this undertaking can still exist and develop depends on the drop of wood losses, and the choice of economical and suitable methods to pass wood through dams. Having summarized the conditions of the operation of some facilities used in passing wood through dams in China, this paper probes preliminarily into the choice of methods about passing wood through dams by studying its investment in capital construetion, technology and effect of the operation, operating cost, wood amount passing through dams each year and so on.