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China has been moving the earth to gain water

Canal will allow Olympians to drink from the tap in parched Beijing.

A woman pours water into a washing machine to launder her clothes in Miyun, where Beijing's receding main reservoir is located.
A woman pours water into a washing machine to launder her clothes in Miyun, where Beijing's receding main reservoir is located.Read more

BEIJING - When 16,000 world athletes and officials show up here this summer, they will be able to turn the taps and get drinkable water - something few Beijing residents ever have enjoyed.

But to keep the taps flowing for the Olympics, the city is draining surrounding regions, depriving poor farmers of water.

While the Chinese capital's filthy air makes headlines, water may be its most desperate environmental challenge. Explosive growth along with a persistent drought mean the city of 17 million people is 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 in Israel.

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 Japan's Tokyo Jogakkan College.

In mountainous Chicheng county, about 70 miles northwest of Beijing, dried-out cornstalks 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.

"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, the Miyun.

"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 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 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.

Nearly all Olympic venues and the Olympic Village will use treated wastewater for heating systems and toilets.

But the rowing venue, built on the dried-out Chaobai riverbed in Beijing's Shunyi district, will use precious water from the Miyun reservoir. Further, an eight-mile-long tunnel will divert water from the Wenyu River to keep the landscape green.

Rapid urban development dried out the Chaobai nine years ago.

Beijing's groundwater, which has fallen 76 feet in the last 50 years, also is overexploited, experts say. Construction has paved over the city, so rainwater 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.

"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."