China canal project sparks eco debate

Some environmentalists question the human and ecological costs of the US$62b project
Henry Sanderson, Business Times 10 Mar 09;

IT is China's latest grand attempt to tame nature. Three canals will bring water hundreds of kilometres to Beijing and other thirsty cities in the north. More than 350,000 people in the way will be forced to move.

For many in Zhangyigang, a village of 942 people in brick-and-mud houses in Henan province, it will be their second uprooting. They moved to higher ground in the late 1950s and 1960s when a dam was built on the Han River to create the Danjiangkou reservoir, submerging homes and temples. Now their next stop is to be Dengzhou, a busy market city 50km to the east, as the dam is raised.

'We are made to keep moving,' said Zhang Jiqing, 53, crouching by his bags of dried corn, which he fears won't fetch a good price because of the financial crisis. 'I have a deep longing for my old place. But what can I do if the government says we have to move? It is for the good of the nation.'

Now, that is coming under question.

Experts and environmentalists say it's time China took a different approach to its growth-related challenges, one based on conservation rather than engineering.

That may not come easy in a country with a long history of mega projects. When China wanted to keep out foreign invaders, it built the Great Wall. When it wanted to move rice, it built the 1,760km Grand Canal. When it needed electricity, it built the Three Gorges Dam, completed in 2006.

The most expensive and technically difficult leg of the canal project has been postponed for more study after scientists questioned its feasibility. Another leg has been delayed for four years to smooth the resettlement process.

Perhaps most important, a key official concedes that the project won't slake the north's thirst for long.

Saving option

'It can only be a supplement to the water shortage in the short term,' Zhang Jiyao, the minister in charge of the water project, told The Associated Press. 'More important, we must depend on saving water.'

It was Mao Zedong, founder of communist China, who first dreamed of the canal project in 1952, remarking that the wet south should share water with the dry north. The densely populated north China plain that includes Beijing has only about 8 per cent of the country's water resources. The result: a project estimated at US$62 billion, more expensive than the Three Gorges Dam. It would transfer 45 trillion litres a year from the Yangtze and its tributaries to wheat farms and fast-growing northern cities.

The eastern route, to be completed in 2013, follows the remains of the Grand Canal, completed some 1,400 years ago, and will use pumping stations to raise the water 40m before it descends into the booming coastal city of Tianjin and Shandong province.

The western route has been postponed pending further study. As currently proposed, it would dam three rivers high in the Tibetan plateau and tunnel more than 95km through mountain rock.

The central route, where work began in 2002, will take water from the Danjiangkou Reservoir across three provinces to supply about a quarter of Beijing's water and 20 other cities.

Increasingly, the human and environmental costs are raising questions.

The Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric project, forced more than 1.4 million people to move, their villages flooded by a 660km long reservoir that the dam created on the middle Yangtze.

Chinese scientists say the rising water behind the dam has affected the geology, causing surrounding hillsides to erode. Local residents complain about landslides, but the government denies the dam triggered them.

China's environmental protection body has also warned of rising pollution in the waters behind the dam, as the once fast-running Yangtze has slowed. The quality hasn't improved despite a costly cleanup, the agency said in a report last year.

Now, as water tables plummet in the north, China is trying to tap the Yangtze, the country's longest river, and its major tributary, the Han.

Doing so would cause algae blooms and make the Han, already polluted by factories, even dirtier, predicts Zhang Haiping, an associate professor at the College of Environmental Science and Engineering at Shanghai's Tongji University.

Moreover, environmentalists worry that supplying more water to Beijing will encourage the capital's citizenry to keep wasting it.

Wen Bo, an opponent of the project, says the focus should instead be on reducing inefficient water use and preserving forests and wetlands, which act as natural reservoirs.

'This mentality of using this mega project as a solution to solve water shortage problems is not the right approach,' said Mr Bo, the China programme director of Pacific Environment, a California-based group. 'We need another more ecologically sound approach to deal with this system, to view China as an ecosystem rather than an engineering board.'

Scientists from Sichuan province criticised the western leg in a public forum in 2007, saying the water to be pumped exceeds supply in an ecologically sensitive area prone to earthquakes.

Positive move

Ma Jun, Beijing-based author of a landmark book on China's water, says postponement of the western leg is a positive move.

'That's a sign of progress in China,' said Mr Ma. 'The eastern and middle routes did not have much open discussion . . . so I think this will help to improve the quality of the decision-making, because if they don't voice concerns then we might end up building some mammoth project and end up finding not much water.'

On relocation, the direction is less clear. Officials say they are learning from the corruption experienced in building the Three Gorges Dam, in which some people were moved to towns where there were no jobs or land, and an official was convicted of pocketing 2.8 million yuan (S$634,000).

This time, the money for resettlement has been declared 'high voltage', meaning untouchable by local bureaucrats, said He Ying, an official in Dengzhou, the city that will receive the Zhangyigang villagers.

He said the Henan provincial government has promised one-tenth of a hectare of land, housing of at least 24 square metres, and 600 yuan a year in compensation for 20 years.

The central government announced a four-year delay in construction of the middle route, pushing back completion to 2014, to ensure infrastructure is in place.

The government will 'put people first', said Mr Zhang, the minister.

Nonetheless, many in Zhangyigang feel shortchanged, saying local officials forced them to sign an agreement last November that they would move. Compensation wasn't mentioned, and despite assurances, many still worry about corruption.

Mr Zhang, the corn farmer, says officials are offering less than half the amount of land that he currently uses and the quality is not good.

'There have been improvements in terms of quasi-open discussions on environmental impacts,' said Andrew Mertha, an associate professor at Cornell University in New York state who has written about opposition to China's water projects. 'But as far as relocation is concerned I see many of the same problems.' - AP