China To Move 330,000 People For Water Project
About 330,000 people in central China are to be evicted from their homes to make way for a reservoir that will form part of a massive water diversion project, state media said Sunday.
More than two-thirds of the people in Hubei and Henan provinces would be relocated to about 50 nearby counties and cities, the official Xinhua news agency quoted Zhang Jiyao, head of the project, as saying.
Zhang did not say where the remaining 100,000 would be placed to make way for the Danjiangkou Reservoir, part of the multi-billion-dollar North-South Water Diversion Project. The project aims to bring water from the nation's longest river, the Yangtze, to the parched north of the country, which is plagued by droughts.
Xinhua has previously said that by 2010, when part of the project will have been completed, up to one billion cubic metres of water will be diverted to Beijing annually.
According to the project's website, the relocation of the 330,000 people is expected to be completed by the end of 2013.
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Discontent over China's huge water scheme
I am really exasperated in continuing to read about the proliferation of dams not only in Asia but also in Africa. As we have seen from every example of a dam being built in these areas, it does nothing but displace people, cause environmental devastation, and threaten agriculture thus exacerbating the very conditions already plaguing farmers in China now. I sometimes really do find myself speechless.
My previous entry on Three Gorges Dam with comment:
Three Gorges Dam-Hydropower At A Huge Human Cost
I have to honestly state that I am sad regarding human behavior today. We see the crisis and yet we continue to shield our eyes from it thinking business as usual is going to solve it when it is really a paradigm moral shift that must occur in our consciousness that will bring us the answers. In short, we have forgotten what it is to be human (if we even know what that means) and instead only care on the whole about survival at any cost (which is really not survival) instead of survival in balance with peace and ecological consciousness.
Water is our lifeblood not a commodity to be used carelessly without regard for the consequences. I think China is learning that lesson the hard way.
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