A very important article that discusses a mammoth project to send water from the south, where it is in excess, to the north where there are shortages. Naturally the environmental effects are uncertain and the economic costs of the project will be great.
Peter Huston
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http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/environment/2008-06-19-chinawater_N.htm
China carves paths to address flooding, drought
By Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY
BEIJING — Floods in south China have killed at least 176 people this month and forced the evacuation of 1.6 million people. Yet the deadly start of China's rainy season masks a bigger crisis: not enough water.
To tackle the water shortage threatening China's breakneck development, the nation is constructing the world's largest water diversion project.
The dramatic scheme aims to defy the laws of nature on a scale that only China would attempt. The plan is to draw water from the flood-prone south, and send it through channels, tunnels and pump stations up to the drought-ridden north.
The $61 billion South-to-North Water Transfer Project is in its sixth year of construction and has at least three more years to go.
"In scale and investment, this is the biggest water engineering project in China's history," said Jiang Xuguang, a leading official at the central government commission responsible for the project. "It is five times bigger than the Three Gorges Dam," a controversial hydropower project. Jiang estimated that 400 million people — a third of China's population — will benefit from the borrowed water.
Thousands of Chinese workers are carving two mighty canals from the Yangtze, China's longest river, up to and under the Yellow River, the nation's second largest river.
By 2010, the eastern and central routes of the diversion project will channel 26 billion cubic yards of water annually from the flood-prone Yangtze to the parched plains of north China.
To ensure that Beijing has plenty of water for the Olympics Aug. 8-24, one section of the central canal was rushed and completed in May.
Mao's mega-project
Chairman Mao Zedong, founder of the People's Republic of China, has been dead 32 years, but his words still move mountains across this communist country. "Water is abundant in the south and scarce in the north," he said in 1952 on the banks of the Yellow River. "If it's feasible, we could borrow some from south to north."
After 50 years of discussions and designs, the groundbreaking came in 2002.
"Mao was a poet, and he had a flash of inspiration," said Ma Jun, one of China's top water analysts. But for five decades after Mao spoke, "we've been using water in a non-sustainable way, thinking there is a solution somewhere," said Ma, who runs a civic group to educate the Chinese public about water pollution. "We believed water would flow to our doorsteps from the Yangtze River."
China's per-capita water volume is one-fourth of the global average, according to the World Bank.
Jiang, in an interview in November 2006, said China needs more water: "If we don't take any measures, there will be an eco-catastrophe in north China. Even after saving water and raising prices, we still lack resources, and we can't solve it without more water."
The water diversion project raises environmental concerns, just as building the giant Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River did.
The strongest criticism targets the most ambitious part of the project — the western routes that will begin construction in 2010. The plan calls for blasting through the Tibetan mountains to link the upper Yangtze to the Yellow River, which would boost the annual volume of borrowed water to 59 billion cubic yards by 2050. That's enough water to cover all of New Jersey with more than 7 feet of water.
Environmental activist Yu Kongjian, a Beijing University professor and consultant to the city government, criticizes the project, saying it costs too much, risks environmental problems for the region and doesn't solve basics such as pollution.
A better use of the billions of dollars would be to treat China's wastewater and sewage, said Ma, the water analyst. "There is a growing understanding within China that this is not the answer, it is only an emergency relief project. The real answer to our water problems is conservation," Ma said.
He urges compliance with water-use regulations, better pollution control and increased recycling. Concrete measures could include fixing millions of leaking pipes, toilets and faucets in Beijing, instead of spending money on resources 746 miles from Beijing. "The 1.3 billion people of China should be smart enough to stop this self-damage," Ma said.
Ma said the water aquifers beneath Beijing have been greatly depleted in recent years. "The government has said that once water flows from the south, it will start reducing the use of underground water and allow the aquifers to be replenished. I hope the government sticks to that plan," he said.
Calls to change behavior
Other analysts say such plans are irrelevant, because Beijing, home to 17 million people, is doomed to a chronic water shortage. "It does not matter how much water you transfer from elsewhere, it will never be enough unless the citizens of Beijing change their behavior and water usage," said Dai Qing, a Beijing-based writer and water policy specialist whose works are banned in China.
"For 800 years as China's capital, Beijing enjoyed good water supplies, but only in the last 10 years has there been dramatic change, with the growth of the city and its population and continuous drought," she said. "Today Beijing faces a very dangerous situation."
Water needed for the Olympics, including one of the world's highest fountains, will "give 500,000 foreign visitors a false impression," Dai said.
"For example, the Olympic rowing venue on the Chaobai River is not a real river at all but a man-made section" on a previously dry riverbed, Dai said. After the Games, she said, the city will let it go dry again.
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