China Droughts Problems http://www.chinatopnews.com/BBS/Square/messages/999.html Dry times threaten north's vitality Post: SCMP on Wed Nov 29 19:11:58 2000: High and dry: all appears well as pedestrians cross a bridge over the Hai He River, in Tianjin, following the worst drought for 50 years. However, the water is supplied solely from the Yellow River 650km to the south, effectively transferring the burden of supplying the city with water to poorer parts of the country. Picture by Jasper Becker JASPER BECKER -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The parched city of Tianjin this year closed public baths, saunas, and other entertainment centres. Citizens were ordered to limit themselves to eight cubic metres of water a month. The city outlawed the use of water for washing cars and other inessential activities. Residents were invited to inform on neighbours wasting water, by phoning in their suspicions. The river flowing through the centre of Tianjin is still called the Hai He, but all its water now comes directly from the Yellow River, about 650km to the south. This year's drought in northern China was so bad that the central Government diverted Yellow River water from drought-stricken regions in Shandong to keep China's third-largest industrial city going. It is only a temporary solution in a year which, for the first time in decades, saw waters from the Yellow River reach the sea for an entire year. This was thanks to Beijing taking charge and ordering all upstream provinces to empty their reservoirs to ensure a continual flow. In effect, this transferred the burden of supplying Tianjin with water to far poorer parts of the country's interior. The problem facing the city of Tianjin is the epitome of the large-scale water crisis enveloping most of northern China. The drought affecting the region has been the worst in 50 years. Water shortages have affected 12.4 million hectares of farmland, impacting on 21.5 million people and 17 million head of livestock. Experts say that except for the southeast, China will face constant water shortages within the next decade. More than two-thirds of 600 mainland cities do not have sufficient water now. Water experts predict that China's annual water deficit will grow from the current six billion cubic metres to fifty billion cubic metres by 2030. The word "river" is now a misnomer for most of the water systems north of the Yangtze. Most river beds in northern China remain broad expanses of mud and gravel, unless the summer flood season turns them into torrents. China's natural water system has been replaced by a vast and costly series of dams, reservoirs, tunnels and canals, most of which have been built since 1949. Tianjin alone has built 30 dams and diverted other rivers, including the Luan He, 250km north, to meet its water needs. Yet the shortages have intensified year after year, provoking furious debate. "It is a man-made disaster," said Cao Dazheng, outspoken director of Tianjin's Water Research Institute. "It is due to climatic changes. There is not enough rain and too many people," argues his counterpart, Tian Pingfen, at the Tianjin Water Resources Bureau. Experts may disagree on the causes, but everyone recognises that the prolonged drought started in the early 1970s and has steadily worsened, threatening the entire industrial and agricultural vitality of the north. The network of reservoirs has proved inadequate. Even in normal years Tianjin, which literally means "ford of heaven", now runs short of 600 million cubic metres of water annually, or about a quarter of its needs. It had been decades since the Hai He flowed all the way to the sea. All but a handful of the 300 tributaries which feed it are now dry, with dire consequences for a population of 120 million people in Hebei, Beijing, Tianjin and part of Henan and Shandong and Shanxi provinces. In the Tianjin area alone, a third of the farmland was left idle on top of a 50 per cent drop in grain production seen last year. "We don't know what will happen if there is no rain by next June," said Mr Cao. "At best we can only divert 400 million cubic metres of water from the Yellow River." He believes Tianjin could fall short of a further 400 million cubic metres, leading to his prediction that Tianjin will soon be forced to buy its water from neighbouring Hebei province. This will come at a high price. Hebei peasants will have to stop growing rice, which requires a lot of water, and turn to other crops. Many of China's current leaders are proud of their role in building the dams and giant reservoirs at Miyun and Guanting, which in the 1950s and 1960s were supposed to solve water shortages in Tianjin and Beijing. Many experts are naturally wary of openly challenging the philosophy behind the management of water resources in the past 50 years. Instead, researchers now focus on how to make the existing system work better. The challenge is enormous: about half the water retained in reservoirs for irrigation is thought to be misused, stolen or diverted. About a fifth of China's rivers are now polluted and 80 per cent can no longer sustain commercial fishing. About 30 billion tonnes of urban sewage are discharged each year into China's water systems and about 700 million mainlanders drink contaminated water. Since 1997, the Guanting reservoir, once the main source of drinking water for Tianjin, has been so polluted that its water can only be used for industry or irrigation. The Panjiakou and Yuqiao reservoirs are also seriously polluted, largely from the concentration of discharges from fertiliser factories and run-off from agricultural land. Tianjin officials are reluctant to reveal statistics that might link pollution to unusually high rates of cancer, the foremost cause of death in the population. For years, the water shortages meant that peasants used untreated industrial waste water to irrigate their crops. Dangerous levels of cadmium, zinc and other metals built up along the food chain. Tianjin will find it easier than most of the cities in north China to find the political will and the money to solve its problems. With its former party secretary, Li Ruihuan, on the Politburo Standing Committee, Tianjin was able to pressure the central Government into approving the US$25 billion (HK$194 billion) project to channel water from the Yangtze to the north. It is expected to be approved in the state budget next year and completed by 2010. The scheme is a large-scale version of the type of solution Tianjin has resorted to in the past. At enormous cost, water will be diverted 900km to Tianjin through central China. This route has been selected over an eastern route as it would be shorter and cheaper and could start operating within just two years. Tianjin itself will have to wait a decade to gain from the central route. Like dozens of other cities in the region, it is now studying how to make its existing water resources stretch further.