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DAM-L China Announces Extensive Plan to Combat Its Water Shortage (fwd)



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From: Right to Water <right-to-water@iatp.org>
To: dianne@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca
Subject: China Announces Extensive Plan to Combat Its Water Shortage
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 11:12:34 -0500
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Right to Water (right-to-water@iatp.org)    Posted: 06/25/2001  By  mritchie@iatp.org	
============================================================



new york times


June 23, 2001 


China Announces Extensive Plan to Combat Its Water Shortage

By ERIK ECKHOLM

  
 
 
 
EIJING, June 22 — The Chinese government has announced details of a crash,
multibillion-dollar plan it hopes will salvage the deteriorating water
supply here, which along with other northern cities has suffered from years
of unusually low rainfall and decades of unchecked pollution and poorly
planned development.

The plan includes construction of new sewage-treatment plants, the closing
of polluting factories, changes in farming practices and graduated pricing
of water. It aims to ease the water shortage before Beijing can benefit
from another grandiose project — to pipe water from the Yangtze River basin
in southern China to the north.

Beijing sits on a plain without large rivers or high rainfall and as its
population surged past 14 million, with little conservation, shortages were
perhaps inevitable. Urban water needs have soared while the surrounding
region has thousands of factories that are polluters and heavy water users
and large farming areas that rely on irrigation. Pollution, as much as
skimpy supply, has been blamed for the immediate crisis because much water
has been rendered unusable.

Until recently, Beijing drew its drinking water from two reservoirs. But
since 1997, pollution has forced the city to stop using one of those
reservoirs, at Guanting, said Zhang Jiyao, deputy minister of water
resources. To make up the deficit, Beijing has resorted to overpumping of
underground waters, Mr. Zhang said. 

Sewage services have not remotely kept up with the city's growth. Choked by
sewage and factory effluents, some river channels here have become virtual
cesspools. Only 22 percent of wastewater in greater Beijing is now treated,
but officials said the rapid construction of new sewage treatment plants
will bring that number to 90 percent by 2005.

With a top-level national coordinating group and a projected 2005 budget of
nearly $3 billion — most of it to be provided by the Beijing city
government — officials insist that things will change rapidly. "This plan
will turn Beijing into an international city with guaranteed water sources
and a beautiful water environment," Mr. Zhang pledged, no doubt with the
city's pending bid for the 2008 Olympics in mind. 

The project aims to restore the Guanting reservoir while improving
protection and augmenting flows into the other key source, the Miyun
reservoir. Already, irrigation has been stopped in large areas formerly
devoted to rice paddies, and water- conserving farm methods will be
introduced upstream while other areas are restored to forest and grassland. 

Officials offered no details of how they would meet the huge cost of
building so many plants and hooking up sprawling communities to the main
sewerage system. 


 
  
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information  
 

Mark Ritchie, President
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
2105 First Ave. South
612-870-3400 office 612-870-4846 fax
Minneapolis, Minnesota  55404 U.S.A.
mritchie@iatp.org   www.iatp.org
www.wtowatch.org, www.farmbillwatch.org
www.gefoodalert.org, www.sustain.org/biotech



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