Olympic City's Water in State of Crisis - Report

PlanetArk 27 Jun 08;

BAODING, China - China's ambitious hopes for a "green" Beijing Olympics have magnified, not relieved, the city's reckless dependence on water from strained underground supplies and a mammoth canal project, a critical report says.

Beijing has promoted its 2008 Games as a nature-friendly festival of sport, but water for the expanses of greenery and sparkling waterways greeting visitors in August will be pumped from sources already battered by over-use and over-engineering, says Probe International, a Canada-based conservation group.

"With each new project to tap water somewhere else, demand for water only increases, and at an ever greater cost to China's environment and economy," says the group's report given to reporters on Thursday.

"Whether diverting surface water or digging ever-deeper for groundwater, the underlying solution is like trying to quench thirst by drinking poison."

The Beijing Games have been beset by worries that air pollution will impair athletes. Yet Probe International's study suggests the Games' thirst for cheap and plentiful water will also leave an environmental burden.

Strained underground sources supply over two thirds of Beijing municipality's needs, and since 2004 the city has also begun drawing on "karst" groundwater supplies 1 km (0.62 miles) or deeper below the surface.

These deep underground sources, stored in porous rock, were originally set aside for use only in times of war and emergency, the report says.

Beijing's thirst for water for the Games has also piled pressure on Hebei, the largely rural province next to the capital that supplies much of its water.

To ensure there was no risk of Beijing running short for the Games, officials ordered a 309-km (192-mile) northern section of the larger South-North Water Transfer Project first be completed to pump more water, if needed, from Hebei.

Hebei is already one of the country's most water-short provinces after a decade-long drought, but nonetheless supplies Beijing with about 80 percent of its water.

A visit there this week showed the canal project has been completed, but only barely, and many farmers have been left weighing the costs of giving up land, water and crops for the sake of presenting a verdant Olympic city.

"We've been lucky with the rains this year, but we still don't have enough water," said Liu Xiuge, a middle-aged farmer in Gaochang Village, who said farmers had planted corn, rather than wheat, because not enough water was available.

Other villagers there said wells were running low because engineers had pumped away groundwater to make way for the canal, about 100 metres across, now cutting through the fields.

"If you dig a well now, you hit rock before there's any water. It was never like that before," said Wang Guiju, a 55-year-old grandmother.

"We've had good fortune with the rain this year. But what happens next year when we have another drought? I don't think they'll be rushing to help us."

Such complaints reflect a much broader water crisis facing northern China and the national capital, where industrialisation and population growth have overwhelmed conservation concerns, says the Probe International report, written by Chinese experts who requested anonymity.

"Long distance diversion is extraordinarily expensive and environmentally damaging," says the report, which calls for reforms to water pricing and economic policy so consumers are encouraged to save water.

(Editing by Nick Macfie)

Beijing faces turmoil due to water crisis: Probe International
Marianne Barriaux, Yahoo News 27 Jun 08;

Beijing's water crisis is so critical that the city is facing economic collapse and the need to resettle part of its population in coming decades, a leading development policy group said Friday.

Experts predict the Chinese capital could run out of water in five to 10 years, according to Grainne Ryder, policy director at Canada-based Probe International.

She said Beijing would potentially have to start shutting down industry, as the city would be incapable of supporting current levels of infrastructure or population.

"I would imagine it would be a phased shut-down of its economy, an economic collapse," she said.

Speaking at the launch of a report on Beijing's water crisis just six weeks before the "Green Olympics" in August, Ryder said authorities had already discussed moving people out of the capital to other cities in the future.

According to the report by Probe, called "Beijing's Water Crisis: 1949-2008 Olympics," Beijing's 200 or so rivers and streams are drying up, and the city's reservoirs are almost empty.

The available water supply, according to Ryder, amounts to less than 200 cubic metres (7,060 cubic feet) per person a year.

One thousand cubic metres is the indicator of extreme water stress according to international standards.

At the same time, water demand is rising, and the Olympic Games -- for which Beijing has developed man-made lakes, musical fountains and new parks -- will consume around 200 million cubic metres of water, the report said.

This is the equivalent of 80,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

More than two thirds of the city's water supply now comes from groundwater, and Beijing is having to extract water originally intended for use in emergencies, such as war, from 1,000 metres (3,280 feet) or more underground.

Not only that, but Beijing is to start transferring water from existing and proposed reservoirs in neighbouring Hebei province this year, and plans to divert water from the Yangtze River in central China from 2010, the report said.

"The answer is we're going to start draining other regions so the proliferation of the crisis is then related to keeping Beijing on life support," Ryder said.

But Jiang Wenlai, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said he thought the comments were exaggerated.

"Currently, Beijing uses 0.5 billion cubic metres of recycled water every year, which is quite advanced on a national level."

He added an ambitious project to bring water via newly dug canals from the Yangtze river to north China will bring 1.2 billion cubic metres of water to Beijing.

"But the report is a warning to us all to do more about the water shortage," he said.

Probe International called for China to set up a special government agency to get the water system under control.

"Nobody is in charge. There are overlapping responsibilities, so they need to have a regulator that can seriously look at what can be done, and what should be done first," Ryder said.

The report also urged the Chinese government to introduce higher prices to encourage people to use less water and to promote efficiency.

Currently, the price in Beijing is 0.54 dollars a cubic metre, the report said, compared to between 0.65 and 0.80 dollars in Brazil, and between 2.2 and 2.7 dollars in England and Wales.

"Beijing needs to start acting like it has a crisis on its hands," Ryder said.