BEIJING, Feb. 27, 2008
China Siphons Farmers' Water For Olympics
Poor Farmers Lose Out As Country Prepares To Play Host
-
A Chinese villager fishing on the ice next to a control tower on the Miyun reservoir, north of Beijing, China, Monday, Jan. 21, 2008. Beijing's main reservoir is dangerously low, and is down to one third the water it had 10 years ago, (AP Photo)
-
Photo Essay Beijing Bash China celebrates one-year countdown to start of 2008 Olympic Games.
But to keep those taps flowing for the Olympics, the city is draining surrounding regions, depriving poor farmers of water.
Though the Chinese capital's filthy air makes headlines, water may be its most desperate environmental challenge. Explosive growth combined with a persistent drought mean the city of 17 million people is fast running out of water.
Meanwhile, rainfall has been below average since 1999. The result: Water resources per person are 1/30th of the world average, lower even than Israel.
"To ensure the supply for a short period of time shouldn't be a problem, but to keep the long-term sustainable use of resources is a challenge," said Ma Jun, an environmentalist who has written about China's water issues.
In an attempt to ease the water woes, China has turned to a grand engineering feat. Workers are digging up the countryside south of Beijing for a canal that will bring water from China's longest river, the Yangtze, and its tributaries to the arid north by 2010.
The first part of the project is being accelerated to meet anticipated demand from Olympic visitors. By April, the canal is to begin bringing 80 billion gallons a year — an amount equal to the annual water use of Tucson, Ariz. — from four reservoirs in nearby Hebei province.
"I think one of the things the Olympics is showing is it's desperation time and Beijing has the power," said James Nickum, an expert on Chinese water policy issues at Tokyo Jogakkan College in Japan.
In mountainous Chicheng county, about 70 miles northwest of Beijing, dried-out corn stalks stick out of the windblown earth. Farmers limit themselves to two buckets of water a day from icy wells. They are prohibited from tapping what's left in the local reservoir.
The farmers have been ordered to grow only corn, which requires less water but also fetches a lower price than rice or vegetables.
The government offered about $30 in compensation, but farmers say not everyone received it. Too poor to buy coal, they carry discarded corn stalks home on their backs for fuel to heat their homes.
"For two years we've haven't used water for rice, because it's been given to Beijing," said Yu Zhongxin, 56, of Ciyingzi, a village of small houses deep in the mountains by the Hei river, which feeds Beijing's main reservoir.
"But the individual interest submits to the state interests," he said. "I have no objection. I support it for the success of the 2008 Olympics. China must win!"
Sitting on the northeast edge of the arid north China plain, near no major river and 90 miles from the sea, Beijing has had water problems for more than a millennium. Sui dynasty emperors built one of the world's longest canals in the seventh century to bring rice from the fertile south to the capital.
In recent decades, rapid development, intensive agriculture and wealthier lifestyles have both drawn down and polluted the city's water supply.
"Very few people used toilets in the 1950s, but right now everyone uses toilets, uses showers, uses swimming pools, and fancy buildings use lots of water," said Dai Qing, a former journalist who has become one of China's most prominent environmental campaigners.
The last decade has seen the construction of water-guzzling projects across the city from landscaped gardens and artificial lakes to golf courses and parks, many spurred by the Olympics.
"We don't have water but no one mentions it, all the policy makers never mention that, just develop, develop," Dai said.
The city has spent around $3 billion since it won the Olympic bid in 2001. It has built wastewater treatment plants, moved water-intensive industries out of the city and cut down on pesticide and water use by farms. Near its main reservoir, the Miyun, it has closed polluting factories and relocated 15,000 residents to reduce household pollution.
Nearly all Olympic venues and the Olympic Village will use treated wastewater for heating systems and toilets. Recycled wastewater also will irrigate the Olympic Park, which will include a wooded area and an artificial lake.
But the rowing venue, built on the dried-out Chaobai river bed in Beijing's Shunyi district, will use precious water from the Miyun reservoir. Further, an eight-mile-long underground tunnel will divert water from the Wenyu River to keep the landscape green.
Rapid urban development dried out the Chaobai nine years ago. The groundwater in Shunyi dropped at twice the rate of the rest of Beijing from 2006 to 2007, according to the Ministry of Water Resources.
"From the beginning I was against the Olympics," Dai said. "There is not enough for water for us to hold Olympic Games, but they didn't listen."
Beijing's groundwater, which has fallen 76 feet in the last 50 years, is overexploited, experts warn. And construction has paved over the city, so rain drains away instead of soaking through the earth to replenish the groundwater.
A polluted and damaged ecosystem in turn creates less rain, so more water is needed to irrigate city parks and other greenery, said Wu Jisong, a senior adviser to the Beijing Olympic Games Organizing Committee and former director general of the Department of Water Resources.
Similarly, more recycled wastewater is now needed to feed Beijing's artificial lakes, said John Pan, a director at the Beijing Water Authority.
"We cannot blame nature," he said at a recent conference in Beijing. "We must realize that it is the human activity and destruction that has briefly affected the water circulation so we should find effective ways to solve the problem."
Easier said than done in a developing country focused on economic growth. But time appears to be running out.
Waste, fertilizer and pesticides so contaminated one of Beijing's two main reservoirs, that the city stopped using it for residential water or agriculture in 1997. The other reservoir, the Miyun, is down to one-third the water it had 10 years ago, despite government efforts to cut water use by farms and move industry out of the area.
A local farmer, Zhao Fuyin, said the water once lapped at the bases of the trees around the reservoir.
"It has been a government priority to preserve this area," said Zhao as he watched a couple of donkeys amble along the reservoir's dry slopes. "But the reservoir is just not enough."
©MMVIII, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
More From World
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
"Who''''s making all the money with all the stuff China makes and exports---oh I forgot--AMERICAN CORPORATIONS"... and the Chinese workers who would otherwise be unemployed and making NO money.
If these workers demanded higher wages, good for them, but US companies would then turn to a lower cost source for goods. Even if US companies decided to pay more for goods, they would turn to domestic sources which would increase the cost of THEIR finished products, meaning less consumer spending here and a market downturn. It is the same as the intellectual bribe that is the minimum wage. We can set the minimum to anything we want...Yay! everyone makes more money now right!?!? NO, it always costs something. Libs are incapable of understanding this.
Farming takes 85% of the water and corn takes a huge amount of water per acre. After years of drought they need to plant other crops.
China has had a pollution issue for a looonnng time.
They should clean up their act for themselves, not for the potential money to be made from having the Olympics in their country. Is this income going to be distributed to their poor farmers?
China is communism democracy wannabe.
A agree with boycotting the 2008 Olympics A place like China should not have even been allowed to host the games.
Classic definition of Communism and Socialism.
God forbid a worker over there get paid a livable wage!!
AMERICAN CORPORATIONS---PRO SLAVE LABOR!!!!
It would scare the carp out of me!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted by Terrapin78 at 02:50 PM : Feb 27, 2008
T wouldn''t suprise me if it were comparable to swimming in sewage. They dont have enough water to feed their crops, let alone drink. After all the *** China has been pulling, tainted or toxic, on the U.S. and other countries, we should all boycott the Olympics
- by terrapin78 February 27, 2008 5:50 PM EST
- I would be interested to see the test results (if any are done) on the quality of the water these athletes will be in.
- Reply to this comment
See all 11 CommentsIt would scare the carp out of me!