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December 28, 2014

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Project alone can’t quench thirst for water in the north

BEIJING yesterday received its first flows from the country’s south after a journey of more than 1,200 kilometers thanks to one of the most ambitious engineering projects in Chinese history.

Yesterday’s delivery marks the completion of the middle route’s first stage, construction of which began exactly 12 years ago.

After decades of planning and at least US$33 billion of investment, more than a billion cubic meters of water is projected to flow to the capital every year, through a network of channels and pipes that would stretch from London to Madrid.

“Beijing is now formally receiving water” from the project, the city’s government said in a text message.

A further 8.5 billion cubic meters — equivalent to 3.4 million Olympic-size swimming pools — will reach provinces along the way, planners said.

China’s government said the project, which will ultimately have three routes and an estimated US$81 billion total cost, will solve a chronic shortage in the country’s arid northern cities.

The middle route’s first stage starts at the Danjiangkou Reservoir in the central province of Hubei.

The middle route will supply 9.5 billion cubic meters of water annually to northern regions, including the cities of Beijing and Tianjin, and the provinces of Henan and Hebei.

Water availability per person in Beijing is on a par with Middle Eastern countries such as Israel, and is threatening the nation’s economic growth.

“This water needs to go to the north,” said a tour guide surnamed Chen, standing atop the 110m-high dam at Danjiangkou Reservoir, which sits 120m above Beijing’s sea-level to allow flow by pure gravity.

Among the engineering feats involved are a 7.2km tunnel beneath the Yellow River — China’s second longest waterway — which is described in official reports as “the most enormous river crossing project in human history.”

To carry the flow over a river in Henan Province, Chinese engineers built a 12km aqueduct, the longest in the world.

But critics say that the scheme’s success is jeopardized by declining rainfall in the south, and that it will act only as a temporary stopgap in the north’s insatiable demand. Northern China supports nearly half the country’s population and economy alongside two-thirds of its arable land, but has just a fifth of its water supply, according to figures from the World Bank.

Looking over the Yellow River in 1952, the late Chairman Mao Zedong is reported to have said: “The north of China needs water and the south has plenty. It would be fine to borrow some if possible.”

Studies were swiftly begun but technical concerns and a lack of capital meant the idea was shelved until 2002 when the government approved it.

Its construction has since taken on added urgency with water levels per person in Beijing falling to just 120 cubic meters — less than Algeria and roughly on a par with Yemen, both desert countries.

The project’s eastern route, built along the 1,400-year-old Grand Canal, began transporting water from the Yangtze to Shandong Province last year but has been dogged by pollution concerns, and some fear the same fate could befall the pricier central section.

State broadcaster CCTV reported last year that Danjiangkou Reservoir had become a “cesspool” due to the sewage pumped into its tributaries, with human waste and animal corpses a common sight in one of them.

Officials have since closed thousands of factories upstream from the reservoir and this year said the water was good enough to drink.

But years of declining rainfall in south China means it now regularly sees droughts of its own, and analysts have said the project will exacerbate those strains.

“The basic trend in the south is that rainfall decreases each year,” said Wu Xinmu, of the Water Research Institute at China’s Wuhan University.

The flow on lower sections of the rivers that feed Danjiangkou will decline dramatically and the project will “threaten the local supply of drinking water and influence farming irrigation and industrial production” in parts of central China, researchers at the university said in a report.

The central route has forced the relocation of more than 330,000 people, according to media reports. Despite that, the 1.05 billion cubic meters it is intended to deliver to Beijing every year will be not be enough to end the city’s thirst.

As China becomes richer, water consumption by citizens has rocketed, and is set to grow further.

The capital’s annual water use has reached 3.6 billion cubic meters, and with supplies at only about 2.1 billion cubic meters it faces a huge shortfall.

The project will alleviate the pressure Beijing faces, said Sun Guosheng, director of the project’s Beijing office, but it will not solve the shortage.

The dean of Beijing Normal University’s College of Water Sciences, Xu Xinyi, said Beijing and other places along the route must promote water conservation in industry, agriculture.

Similarly, Zhang Tong, deputy chief of the Beijing Institute of Water, urged the city to place restrictions on industries that require large quantities of water.

Beijing Mayor Wang Anshun promised citywide water conservation promotion efforts.

Environmentalists have said water conservation is a priority and that water prices must rise.

A “supply-side approach” exemplified by the project “does not address the underlying causes of the region’s water stress,” said Britt Crow-Miller, assistant professor of geography at Portland State University.

China’s development model is “about keeping things growing at all costs ... and deferring the consequences,” she said.




 

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