Category: China’s Water

Benefits of river revitalization plan questioned

(June 29, 2010) Wang Jian, a Beijing-based water specialist, traced the Yongdinghe River to its source in Ningwu County of northern China’s Shanxi Province in mid-2007, where he discovered the groundwater system had been destroyed by coal mining and soil erosion from over-farming and the felling of forest trees.

Beijing Getting Thirsty

(July 8, 2010) ‘Dashengzhuang, in Xihongmen town in Beijing’s Daxing district, has guards at its entrance and people are only allowed in after showing a pass which includes the holder’s name, sex, ethnic background, hometown, occupation, identity card number and mobile phone number. The village is closed between 11pm and 6am.

Before the crisis: When Beijing was rich with water

(July 16, 2010) In “Daxing County’s Water Gone Forever,” the eleventh in a series of oral histories produced by a team of investigative environmental historians and water experts in Beijing and led by China’s prize-winning journalist Dai Qing and Probe International, Li Zhenwe, a former engineer at the water bureau in the Beijing’s southern Daxing County talks about his childhood in one of the county villages where annual floods and a surfeit of water were once an integral part of village life.

Not what you bargained for: China’s massive water scheme delivering polluted goods

(July 12, 2010) While Chinese officials continue to forge ahead with an expensive scheme to move water from the Yangtze river in the south of the country to water-starved cities in the north, fears concerning its cleanliness are surfacing once again. According to a recent report, authorities are concerned over the poor water quality in the eastern leg of the South North Water Diversion project.