Bejing Water Diversion Plan for Olympics Criticized

Bejing Water Diversion Plan For Olympics Criticized

Plans to divert water to Beijing for the Olympic Games are shortsighted and will not ease the city's severe water crisis, a Canadian-based development policy group said in a study released recently.

Channeling water from neighboring provinces for an event billed as the “Green Olympics” is not a “fundamental solution,” Probe International said in its report, compiled by a team of experts in Beijing who requested anonymity. Such diversions are expensive and damage the environment, the report said.

“Whether diverting surface water or digging ever-deeper for groundwater, the underlying solution proposed is like trying to quench thirst by drinking poison,” the report said.
It didn't say why the compilers had requested anonymity, although the Olympics are a highly sensitive issue and authorities have responded harshly at times to perceived critics of the games.

Explosive growth combined with a persistent drought for over two decades have drawn down Beijing's water table, meaning the city of 17 million people is fast running out of water.
Beijing has drained surrounding regions in recent years to supply its growing water needs, depriving poor farmers of water and encouraging wasteful consumption, the report said.

Workers have also dug a canal south of Beijing that is bringing water to the capital for the Olympics, an accelerated part of a major water transfer project that in two years will start delivering water to the parched north from China's longest river, the Yangtze. Authorities say they know they have a problem. Beijing says it has spent around $3 billion since it won the Olympic bid in 2001 to build wastewater treatment plants, move polluting and water-intensive industries out of the city, and cut down on pesticide and water use by farms.

However, Probe International said that even with the ambitious Yangtze transfer scheme, Beijing will still have to rely on groundwater that is currently being pumped out faster than it is being replenished. It said groundwater makes up more than two-thirds of Beijing's water supply.
The city's two main reservoirs are also holding less than 10 percent of their original capacity, it said.

The report recommended that the government curb water demand by using economic and legal measures such as increasing the price of water and having a water industry regulator. Some state water companies act as their own regulator, it said. beijing has one of the world's lowest per person available water resources, at one-thirtieth of the world average. The city has constructed water-guzzling golf courses since the 1980s and projects across the city, including landscaped gardens and artificial lakes, for the Olympics.

Nearly all Olympic venues and the Olympic Village will use treated wastewater for heating systems and toilets. Recycled wastewater also will irrigate the Olympic Park, which will include a wooded area and an artificial lake. But the rowing venue, built on the dried-out Chaobai river bed in Beijing's Shunyi district, will use precious reservoir water. An eight-mile underground tunnel will divert water from the Wenyu River to keep the landscape green.
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Again, Bejing has one of the world's lowest per person available water resources, at one-thirtieth of the world average. And yet, they continue to divert water from poor farmers and others who need it to make artificial lakes and landscaping for the Olympics which they are hoping will bring them a lot of $$$$$$$$$$$$$$. I am already boycotting the Bejing Olympics because of China's involvement with Sudan regarding drilling oil wells on land cleared in the Darfur genocide. These selfish moves regarding water diversion make another reason why a boycott is necessary. This is simply wasteful at a time when water conservation is crucial to the people of China, especially considering 90% of their rivers are already polluted. The water they will provide in the toilets in Bejing to put on their"green" show will probably be cleaner than what their people have to drink now that is giving them cancer. Such is the power of the dollar bill, or yen.