Ho Ai Li Straits Times 18 Jun 11;
I WAS in Hubei talking to farmers who had to make way for a plan to pipe water from central Hubei to northern cities such as Beijing.
A neatly dressed man who said he was an official approached me and asked to see my press card. Another official was on his way and wanted to 'have a meal' with me, I was told, as he copied down my details. Never mind that it was 3pm and too hot to eat.
The man left. The villagers asked me to do the same. 'Get out before they stop you,' warned one of them.
Later, I was told villagers elsewhere had clammed up in front of reporters; others answered reporters' questions nervously in the presence of officials.
Their fear is understandable.
For the plan, called Nanshui Beidiao, or North-South Water Diversion, has come under even more scrutiny, what with severe droughts draining Hubei, the province of a thousand lakes.
A rare admission by Beijing last month that the Three Gorges Dam has led to serious problems has also raised doubts about the transfer, dwarfed only in scale by the dam.
On May 18, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao chaired a State Council meeting to look into 'urgent' environmental problems caused by the building of the dam, the world's largest hydroelectric project.
Underlining the severity of the problems, the State Council has set aside 100 billion yuan (S$19 billion) - about two-fifths the cost of the 254 billion yuan spent to build the dam - to repair the damage. Among other things, the Three Gorges project has left surrounding river banks more prone to landslides and earthquakes. It has also displaced at least 1.2 million people.
Much of the money will be used to compensate the people whose lives were disrupted by the move. Corrupt officials siphoned off some money meant for them. A state probe found that 12 per cent of the resettlement budget was pocketed by officials in 1999.
The worry is whether farmers living around the Danjiangkou Reservoir, one of Asia's largest and the source of water to be sent to Beijing, will encounter the same problems. One resettled farmer told me he was unhappy with the quality of his new dwellings and suspected that it was made of materials cheaper than promised. He and other farmers also wonder whether the water transfer project will cause similar environmental problems as the dam.
Projected to cost US$62 billion (S$76 billion), twice as much as the Three Gorges Dam, the water transfer is the largest water diversion project in the world. When ready by 2050, the water routes will span 4,350km - the approximate distance between Singapore and Beijing.
Under the plan, water will be piped from the south to the north via three routes - eastern, central and western. Water will be pumped into cities such as Beijing and Tianjin, and also north-western parts like Gansu and Inner Mongolia. Transferring water to these arid areas will boost industries, proponents of the plan say. Its supporters included Chairman Mao Zedong himself, who famously declared back in 1952: 'The south has a lot of water, the north little. If possible, it's fine to lend a little water.'
But what was the case in Mao's days nearly six decades ago might be changing.
Climate change has made rainfall unpredictable, noted Mr Peter Bosshard, policy director of California-based environmental group International Rivers. He said: 'Already, people and the eco-system in the lower Yangtze basin are crying out for water. How can you withdraw so much water to send to Beijing?'
Indeed, the south is getting drier - total freshwater reserves in the Yangtze went down to 172 billion cubic metres in 2009, a drop of 17 per cent from 2005.
Problems with pollution have also surfaced. Water pumped via the eastern canal from Yangzhou to Tianjin is expected to be so costly and polluted that the Tianjin authorities are looking at the desalination of seawater as an alternative instead.
Enormous infrastructure projects such as the water diversion scheme reflect the top Chinese leaders' penchant for engineering solutions, said Mr Bosshard, noting that many of them are trained engineers.
Indeed, China has traditionally sought ways to increase the supply of water rather than to manage demand.
Such massive solutions obscure the need for smaller efforts to change individuals' behaviour. Some city dwellers have little sense of the sacrifices made by their poorer cousins in the countryside just so that they don't have to fret about water.
A Chinese reporter recounted a meeting with a Beijing woman who threw away a half-drunk bottle of mineral water, saying it was too heavy to carry and would ruin the shape of her handbag. She said there was no need to worry about the capital running out of water - the North-South Water Diversion will come to its rescue. That is typical of the blind faith that many city dwellers in Beijing have in the water transfer to quench their thirst.
But, in fact, they are already living on borrowed water. The city drains the resource from nearby provinces like Hebei, as well as from beneath the ground.
In a country known for social campaigns, little has been done to drive home the message that water is precious. Nor is the operation of snow parks, spas and golf courses - which use a lot of water for leisure purposes - curtailed in the capital.
The water diversion project is seen to be a lifeline supplying Beijing with one billion cubic metres of water a year, almost a third of the amount it used up in 2009. But it is no cure-all that allows city folk to fritter away water with abandon. Unless a mindset change is engineered among people, no amount of water siphoned from the south will be able to quench their thirst for more.
