Olympics Suck Up China's Already Scarce Water
- added July 20, 2008
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- JanforGore
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Three years ago, local government officials told farmers in this village of 7,000 residents to stop using water from a reservoir near their wheat and corn fields. If they needed water, the farmers were told, they would have to dig a well.
"They said there wasn't enough water," Jia Jianguo, 60, recalled.
At their own expense, the farmers dug a 90-foot well. But even though the new irrigation system worked fine, the locals have been forced to pool their meager resources each year that the water recedes to keep their crops alive. The well is now 135 feet deep, and the groundwater is seeping away as fast as the province's increasingly scarce water supplies are being channeled some 100 miles southwest to the thirsty capital of 15 million inhabitants, Beijing.
The Changgucheng farmers were never told that their reservoir is one of four in the province tapped to meet the capital's demand for water leading up to and during the Olympic Games, which begin in August. The Games are expected to increase Beijing's water consumption by at least 5 percent, or 162,000 acre-feet, according to a recent report by Probe International, a Canadian environmental group. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons.
From south to north
The channel is needed not only to make more water available for Beijing, but to clean Olympic venues and to flush out the city's polluted canals and lakes.
It is part of a mammoth $25 billion diversion scheme to bring water from southern rivers to the arid north to bolster Beijing's water supply.
Ecologists say this is just another example of how the push to showcase a green Olympics is creating environmental problems in provinces outside Beijing. Major polluting factories have been shut down or moved out of the capital for the Olympics. Diverting Hebei's water is just one of many potentially problematic actions, experts say.
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Diverting scarce water from farmers just to put on a show for the world is sickening.
Another reason to boycott their sham along with their human rights abuses and their part in genocide.
"They said there wasn't enough water," Jia Jianguo, 60, recalled.
At their own expense, the farmers dug a 90-foot well. But even though the new irrigation system worked fine, the locals have been forced to pool their meager resources each year that the water recedes to keep their crops alive. The well is now 135 feet deep, and the groundwater is seeping away as fast as the province's increasingly scarce water supplies are being channeled some 100 miles southwest to the thirsty capital of 15 million inhabitants, Beijing.
The Changgucheng farmers were never told that their reservoir is one of four in the province tapped to meet the capital's demand for water leading up to and during the Olympic Games, which begin in August. The Games are expected to increase Beijing's water consumption by at least 5 percent, or 162,000 acre-feet, according to a recent report by Probe International, a Canadian environmental group. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons.
From south to north
The channel is needed not only to make more water available for Beijing, but to clean Olympic venues and to flush out the city's polluted canals and lakes.
It is part of a mammoth $25 billion diversion scheme to bring water from southern rivers to the arid north to bolster Beijing's water supply.
Ecologists say this is just another example of how the push to showcase a green Olympics is creating environmental problems in provinces outside Beijing. Major polluting factories have been shut down or moved out of the capital for the Olympics. Diverting Hebei's water is just one of many potentially problematic actions, experts say.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Diverting scarce water from farmers just to put on a show for the world is sickening.
Another reason to boycott their sham along with their human rights abuses and their part in genocide.
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- JanforGore
- 1 month ago
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