水

The Chinese character for water has deep significance for a nation whose population is slowly sucking down her remaining natural water supplies, particularly in the more arid, northern part of China. Back in 2005, the BBC reported that potable water from China’s existing sources was already fighting an horrific environmental battle: “Zhang Lijun, Deputy Director of the State Environmental Protection Administration [noted:] ‘A survey showed that underground water in 90 percent of Chinese cities has been polluted by organic and inorganic pollutants, and there are signs that [it] is spreading.’” China drew 70% of its urban and 40% of its agricultural water supplies from underground sources. Water issues could just be the giant brake on an otherwise accelerating economy. The situation has grown from “it can ’t get much worse than this” to “oh my God, the water situation in China has gotten so much worse.”

Add a dash of rising global temperatures, and China may shrivel up and die of thirst: “A chronic drought is ravaging farmland. The Gobi Desert is inching south. The Yellow River, the so-called birthplace of Chinese civilization, is so polluted it can no longer supply drinking water. The rapid growth of megacities — 22 million people in Beijing and 12 million in Tianjin [Beijing’s sister port city] alone — has drained underground aquifers that took millenniums to fill.” New York Times, June 1^st.

But China tackles big problems in even bigger ways. Take for example, China’s Three Gorges Dam (above), built over 19 years to contain flooding, generate massive hydroelectric power and store tons of water by blocking off the western Yangtze River, which runs east-west through the middle of the country. It has been a colossal feat, albeit plagued with problems: “According to official figures, the venture cost China about $23 billion, but outside experts estimate it may have cost double that amount. The dam has been plagued by reports of floating archipelagos of garbage, carpets of algae and landslides on the banks along the vast expanse of still water since the 600-foot-tall dam on the Yangtze River was completed in 2006. Critics also have complained that the government has fallen far short of its goals in helping to reset tle the 1.4 million people displaced by the rising waters behind the dam.” New York Times, May 19^th.

But such problems have not deterred China’s planners to begin moving forward on her next huge water-related solution to the obvious crisis and pending shortages in the north: “Not atypically, the Chinese government has a grand and expensive solution: Divert at least six trillion gallons of water each year hundreds of miles from the other great Chinese river, the Yangtze, to slake the thirst of the north China plain and its 440 million people.

“The engineering feat, called the South-North Water Diversion Project, is China’s most ambitious attempt to subjugate nature. It would be like channeling water from the Mississippi River to meet the drinking needs of Boston, New York and Washington. Its $62 billion price tag is twice that of the Three Gorges Dam, which is the world’s largest hydroelectric project. And not unlike that project, which Chinese officials last month admitted had ‘urgent problems,’ the water diversion scheme is increasingly mired in concerns about its cost, its environmental impact and the sacrifices poor people in the provinces are told to make for those in richer cities.

“Three artificial channels from the Yangtze would transport precious water from the south, which itself is increasingly afflicted by droughts; the region is suffering its worst one in 50 years. The project’s human cost is staggering — along the middle route, which starts here in Hubei Province at a gigantic reservoir and snakes 800 miles to Beijing, about 350,000 villagers are being relocated to make way for the canal. Many are being resettled far from their homes and given low-grade farmland; in Hubei, thousands of people have been moved to the grounds of a former prison.” NY Times, June 1^st. The drain on the river system is so significant that scientists believe the environmental consequences will produce very significant and yet unforeseen damage. Further, the emphasis on Beijing and its surrounding areas has southerners screaming that they should not be required to bear the burden of solving the water problems in the north. The bureaucracy trundles along undeterred.

Lest we sit back with a smug environmentally-superior smile, the United States faces its own intense water issues – which have been the frequent subject of my blog. Not only are obvious problems arising in the arid Western states, but as the Ogallala Aquifer (which stretches from the Dakotas to north Texas and supplies much of the irrigation water to our grain belt) runs out of water in the next 25-35 years, the U.S. may have to contemplate similar massive water diversion projects either to refill that aquifer from our great rivers or to transport water in other ways to the plains states where so much of our food supply is centered.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you think the problems of dwindling oil are the biggest issues on earth, think again.