ENV - Drought eases in China but chronic water shortages forecast

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Drought eases in China, but chronic water shortages forecast

By Joe Mcdonald, Associated Press, 6/21/2001 08:02

BEIJING (AP) Rain this month eased a severe drought in parts of China, but other areas are so dry that limits have been imposed on household water use, officials said Thursday.

And in the longer term, they said, Beijing and other regions of dry northern China face such severe shortages that the government will spend $3 billion by 2005 on projects to get more water to the Chinese capital.

This year's drought is the second most widespread in China since 1949, surpassed only by a 1978 dry spell, the vice minister of water resources, Zhang Jiyao, said at a news conference.

Lack of rain has affected 73 million acres of farmland and at one point left areas that are home to 22.6 million people without adequate drinking water, Zhang said. In some places, he said, rainfall is 40 percent below normal.

''The situation is still serious in areas most severely stricken by the drought,'' he said.

Rains in mid-June eased droughts in areas ranging from the grain-growing northeast through the Yellow River basin of north-central China and into the southwest, Zhang said.

But the crowded eastern province of Shandong especially the cities of Yantai and Weihai is still dry, the vice minister said. Weihai recently set a monthly allotment of 264 gallons of water per person, he said, and charges penalties for overuse.

Shandong has more than 100 million people and is one of China's most important farming areas. ''This is an emergency,'' Zhang said.

Scattered areas of China have suffered a string of droughts in recent years. Shortages are worsened by growing competition for water by farms and industry, wasteful use and pollution that ruins supplies.

Officials hope to tackle Beijing's water woes by cleaning up polluted reservoirs, building 33 water-treatment plants in neighboring provinces, switching farms to crops that need less water and closing wasteful industries, Zhang said.

Beijing also hopes to recycle 90 percent of its waste water in new treatment plants by 2010, up from 20 percent today, said Deputy Mayor Yue Fugong.

Such conservation measures are a shift away from China's past strategy of increasing supplies by drilling new wells and other measures.

But official plans still emphasize a huge reshaping of the Chinese environment with a network of aqueducts and canals meant to move billions of gallons of water a year from the Yangtze river in the south to the dry north. That project, still in planning stages, isn't expected to be completed for a decade.

-- Anonymous, June 21, 2001


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