Cancerous Growth of a Mad "Olympic Host" -- Though water is drying up, a
Chinese metropolis booms

International Herald Tribune

Though water is drying up, a Chinese metropolis booms

By Jim Yardley
Thursday, September 27, 2007

SHIJIAZHUANG, China: Hundreds of feet below ground, this provincial
capital of more than two million people is steadily running out of
water. The water table is sinking fast. Municipal wells have already
drained two-thirds of the local groundwater.

Above ground, this city in the North China Plain is having a party.
Economic growth topped 11 percent last year. Population is rising. One
new upscale housing development is advertising waterfront property on
lakes filled with pumped groundwater. Another half-built complex, the
Arc de Royal, is rising above one of the lowest points in the city's
water table.

"People who are buying apartments aren't thinking about whether there
will be water in the future," said Zhang Zhongmin, who has tried for the
past 20 years to raise public awareness about the city's dire water
situation.

For three decades, water has been indispensable in sustaining the
rollicking economic expansion that has made China a world power. Now,
China's galloping, often wasteful style of economic growth is pushing
the country toward a water crisis. Water pollution is rampant
nationwide, while water scarcity has worsened severely in north China -
even as demand keeps rising everywhere.

China is scouring the world for oil, natural gas and minerals to keep
its economic machine humming. But trade deals cannot solve water
problems. Water usage in China has quintupled since 1949, and leaders
will increasingly face tough political choices as cities, industry and
farming compete for a finite and unbalanced water supply.

One example is grain. The Communist Party, leery of depending on imports
to feed the country, has long insisted on grain self-sufficiency. But
growing so much grain consumes huge amounts of underground water in the
North China Plain, which produces half the country's wheat. Some
scientists say farming in the rapidly urbanizing region should be
restricted to protect endangered aquifers. Yet doing so could threaten
the livelihoods of millions of farmers and cause a spike in
international grain prices.

For the Communist Party, the immediate challenge is the prosaic task of
forcing the world's most dynamic economy to conserve and protect clean
water. Water pollution is so widespread that regulators say a major
incident occurs every other day. Municipal and industrial dumping has
left broad sections of many rivers "unfit for human contact."

Cities like Beijing and Tianjin have shown progress on water
conservation, but China's economy continues to emphasize growth.
Industry in China uses 3 to 10 times more water, depending on the
product, than industries in developed nations.

"We have to now focus on conservation," said Ma Jun, a prominent
environmentalist and author of "China's Water Crisis." "We don't have
much extra water resources. We have the same resources and much bigger
pressures from growth."

In the past, the Communist Party has reflexively turned to engineering
projects to address water problems, and now it is reaching back to one
of Mao's unrealized schemes: the $62 billion South-to-North Water
Transfer Project to funnel 45 billion cubic meters, or 12 trillion
gallons, northward every year along three routes from the Yangtze River
basin, where water is more abundant. The project, if fully built, would
be completed in 2050. The eastern and central lines are already under
construction; the western line, the most controversial because of
environmental concerns, remains in the planning stages.

The North China Plain undoubtedly needs any water it can get. An
economic powerhouse with more than 200 million residents, the region has
limited rainfall and depends on groundwater for 60 percent of its water
supply. Other countries have aquifers that are being drained to
dangerously low levels, like Yemen, India, Mexico and the United States.
But scientists say the aquifers below the North China Plain may be
drained within 30 years.

"There's no uncertainty," said Richard Evans, a hydrologist who has
worked in China for two decades and has served as a consultant to the
World Bank and China's Ministry of Water Resources. "The rate of decline
is very clear, very well documented. They will run out of groundwater if
the current rate continues."

Outside Shijiazhuang, construction crews are working on the transfer
project's central line, which will provide the city with infusions of
water on the way to the final destination, Beijing. For many of the
engineers and workers, the job carries a patriotic gloss.

Yet while many scientists agree that the project will provide an
important influx of water, they also say it will not be a cure-all. No
one knows how much clean water the project will deliver; pollution
problems are already arising on the eastern line. Cities and industry
will be the beneficiaries of the new water, but the impact on farming is
limited. Water deficits are expected to remain.

"Many people are asking the question: What can they do?" said Zheng
Chunmiao, a leading international groundwater expert. "They just cannot
continue with current practices. They have to find a way to bring the
problem under control."
An ecological fall

On a drizzly, polluted morning last April, Wang Baosheng steered his
Chinese-made sport utility vehicle out of a shopping center on the west
side of Beijing for a three-hour southbound commute that became a tour
of the water crisis pressing down on the North China Plain.

Wang travels several times a month to Shijiazhuang, where he is chief
engineer overseeing construction of five kilometers, or three miles, of
the central line of the water transfer project. A light rain splattered
the windshield, and Wang recited a Chinese proverb about the
preciousness of spring showers for farmers. He also noticed one dead
river after another as his SUV glided over dusty, barren riverbeds: the
Yongding, the Yishui, the Xia and, finally, the Hutuo.

"You see all these streams with bridges, but there is no water," Wang said.

A century or so ago, the North China Plain was a healthy ecosystem,
scientists say. Farmers digging wells could strike water within two and
a half meters, or eight feet. Streams and creeks meandered through the
region. Swamps, natural springs and wetlands were common.

Today, the region, comparable in size to New Mexico, is parched. Roughly
five-sixths of the wetlands have dried up, according to one study.
Scientists say that most natural streams or creeks have disappeared.
Several rivers that once were navigable are now mostly dust and brush.
The largest natural freshwater lake in northern China, Lake Baiyangdian,
is steadily contracting and besieged with pollution.

What happened?

The list includes misguided policies, unintended consequences, a
population explosion, climate change and, most of all, relentless
economic growth. In 1963, a flood paralyzed the region, prompting Mao to
construct a flood control system of dams, reservoirs and concrete
spillways. Flood control improved but the ecological balance was altered
as the dams began choking off rivers that once flowed eastward into the
North China Plain.

The new reservoirs gradually became major water suppliers for growing
cities like Shijiazhuang. Farmers, the region's biggest water users,
began depending almost exclusively on wells. Rainfall steadily declined
in what some scientists now believe is a consequence of climate change.

Before, farmers had compensated for the region's limited annual rainfall
by planting only three crops every two years. But underground water
seemed limitless and government policies pushed for higher production,
so farmers began planting a second annual crop, usually winter wheat,
which requires a lot of water.

By the 1970s, studies show, the water table was already falling. Then
Mao's death and the introduction of market-driven economic reforms
spurred a farming renaissance. Production soared, and rural incomes
rose. The water table kept falling, further drying out wetlands and rivers.

Around 1900, Shijiazhuang was a collection of farming villages. By 1950,
the population had reached 335,000. This year, the city has roughly 2.3
million people with a metropolitan population of nine million.

More people meant more demand for water, and the city now heavily pumps
groundwater. The water table is falling more than a meter a year. Today,
some city wells must descend 200 meters to get clean water. In the
deepest drilling areas, steep downward funnels have formed in the water
table that are known as "cones of depression."

Groundwater quality also has worsened. Wastewater, often untreated, is
now routinely dumped into rivers and open channels. Zheng, the water
specialist, said studies showed that roughly three-quarters of the
region's entire aquifer system is now suffering some level of contamination.

"There will be no sustainable development in the future if there is no
groundwater supply," said Liu Changming, a leading Chinese hydrology
expert and a senior scholar at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Seeking a water miracle

Three decades ago, when Deng Xiaoping shifted China from Maoist ideology
and fixated the country on economic growth, a generation of technocrats
gradually took power and began rebuilding a country that ideology had
almost destroyed. Today, the entire top leadership of the Communist
Party - including Hu Jintao, China's president and party chief - were
trained as engineers.

Though not members of the political elite, Wang Baosheng, the engineer
on the water transfer project, and his colleague Yang Guangjie are of
the same background. This spring, at the construction site outside
Shijiazhuang, bulldozers clawed at a V-shaped cut in the dirt while
teams of workers in blue jumpsuits and orange hard hats smoothed wet
concrete over a channel that will be almost as wide as a football field.

Yang, the project manager. compares the transfer project to the damming
of the Colorado River in the western United States and the water
diversion system devised for Southern California early in the 20th century.

"I've been to the Hoover Dam, and I really admire the people who built
that," Yang said. "At the time, they were making a huge contribution to
the development of their country."

"Maybe we are like America in the 1920s and 1930s," Yang added. "We're
building the country."

China's disadvantage, compared with the United States, is that it has a
smaller water supply yet almost five times as many people. China has
about 7 percent of the world's water resources and roughly 20 percent of
its population. It also has a severe regional water imbalance, with
about four-fifths of the water supply in the south.

Mao's vision of borrowing water from the Yangtze for the north had an
almost profound simplicity, but engineers and scientists spent decades
debating the project before the government approved it, partly out of
desperation, in 2002. Today, demand is far greater in the north, and
water quality has badly deteriorated in the south. Roughly 41 percent of
China's wastewater is now dumped in the Yangtze, raising concerns that
siphoning away clean water northward will exacerbate pollution problems
in the south.

The upper reaches of the central line are expected to be finished in
time to provide water to Beijing for the Olympic Games next year. Evans,
the World Bank consultant, called the complete project "essential" but
added that success would depend on avoiding waste and efficiently
distributing the water.

Liu, the scholar and hydrologist, said that farming would get none of
the new water and that cities and industry must quickly improve
wastewater treatment. Otherwise, he said, cities will use the new water
to dump more polluted wastewater. Currently, Shijiazhuang dumps
untreated wastewater into a canal that local farmers use to irrigate fields.

For years, Chinese officials thought irrigation efficiency was the
answer for reversing groundwater declines. Eloise Kendy, a hydrology
expert with The Nature Conservancy who has studied the North China
Plain, said that farmers had made improvements but that the water table
had kept sinking. Kendy said the spilled water previously considered
"wasted" had actually soaked into the soil and recharged the aquifer.
Efficiency erased that recharge. Farmers also used efficiency gains to
irrigate more land.

Kendy said scientists had discovered that the water table was dropping
because of water lost by evaporation and transpiration from the soil,
plants and leaves. The sum of this lost water, combined with low annual
rainfall, is not enough to meet demand.

Farmers have no choice. They drill deeper.
What now?

For many people living in the North China Plain, the notion of a water
crisis seems distant. No one is crawling across a parched desert in
search of an oasis. But every year, the water table keeps dropping.
Nationally, groundwater usage has almost doubled since 1970 and now
accounts for one-fifth of the country's total water usage, according to
the China Geological Survey Bureau.

The Communist Party is fully aware of the problems. A new water
pollution law is under consideration that would sharply increase fines
against polluters. Different coastal cities are building desalination
plants. Multinational waste treatment companies are being recruited to
help tackle the enormous wastewater problem.

Many scientists believe that huge gains can still be reaped by better
efficiency and conservation. In north China, pilot projects are under
way to try to reduce water loss from winter wheat crops. Some cities
have raised the price of water to promote conservation, but it remains
subsidized in most places. Already, some cities along the route of the
transfer project are recoiling because of the planned higher prices.
Some say they may just continue pumping.

Tough political choices, though, seem unavoidable. Studies by different
scientists have concluded that the rising water demands in the North
China Plain make it unfeasible for farmers to continue planting a winter
crop. The international ramifications would be significant if China
became a bigger and bigger customer on world grain markets. Some
analysts have long warned that grain prices could steadily rise,
contributing to inflation and making it harder for other developing
countries to buy food.

The social implications would also be significant inside China. Near
Shijiazhuang, Wang Jingyan's farming village depends on wells that are
200 meters deep. Not planting winter wheat would amount to economic suicide.

"We would lose 60 percent or 70 percent of our income if we didn't plant
winter wheat," Wang said. "Everyone here plants winter wheat."

Another water proposal is also radical: huge, rapid urbanization.
Scientists say converting farmland into urban areas would save enough
water to stop the drop in the water table, if not reverse it, because
widespread farming still uses more water than urban areas. Of course,
large-scale urbanization, already under way, could worsen air quality;
Shijiazhuang's air already ranks among the worst in China because of
heavy industrial pollution.

For now, Shijiazhuang's priority, like that of other major Chinese
cities, is to grow as quickly as possible. The city's gross domestic
product has risen by an average of 10 percent every year since 1980,
even as the city's per capita rate of available water is now only
one-33rd of the world average.

"We have a water shortage, but we have to develop," said Wang Yongli, a
senior engineer with the city's water conservation bureau. "And
development is going to be put first."

Wang has spent four decades charting the steady extinction of the North
China Plain's aquifer. He said Shijiazhuang had more than 800 illegal
wells and resembled Israel in terms of water scarcity. "In Israel,
people regard water as more important than life itself," he said. "In
Shijiazhuang, it's not that way. People are focused on the economy."

iht.com/asia A video report and the first article in this series. Page 4
Beijing raises environmental concerns over Three Gorges Dam.

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