Below is the eleventh in a series of oral histories about Beijing water, as told to An He and Wang Jian by Li Zhenwe. Mr. Li is from Shahe Village in Daxing County and a former engineer at the water bureau in the Daxing County. You can download the pdf here.
Below is the ninth in a series of oral histories about Beijing water, as told to An He and Wang Jian by Li Yuling, a long-time resident of Beijing.
(December 29, 2009) China will use stimulus spending to speed up shifting 330,000 people slated to be displaced for a vast water transfer project, accelerating work on the troubled scheme, an official newspaper said on Tuesday.
(December 25, 2009) The villagers of Machuan, whose houses were bulldozed in August this year, were just the first of more than 330,000 Chinese peasants who will have to be delivered to new homes before the South-North Water Project is complete. At £37bn the project will cost more than twice as much as the Three Gorges Dam, delivering nearly 12 trillion gallons of water along three networks of tunnels and canals that will branch out into northern, eastern and central China.
(December 22, 2009) Beijing authorities said the water price for residential use will go up 8 percent, an increase that follows a jump of almost 50 percent in the price of water for nonresidential use last month, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency.
(November 16, 2009) Three lakes in Beijing were seriously polluted in October, the Beijing municipal water resources bureau website said on Nov 12.
(July 29, 2009) Beijing has started to plant water-source forests in its neighboring Hebei Province to protect two of the city’s largest reservoirs, official said Wednesday.
(December 22, 2008) This capital’s growing thirst for clean water is clashing with provincial demands and concerns that plans to tap China’s rivers will hurt an already troubled environment.
(December 22, 2009) Beijing will raise water price by 8 percent starting Tuesday to encourage saving in the Chinese capital, local authorities said Monday.
(December 18, 2009) Most public representatives at a hearing on water costs yesterday said they supported an increase in the cost of tap water for next year because they had “no alternative”.
(December 17, 2009) The government’s decision to raise water prices drew criticism from local residents who voluntarily attended the public hearing on Wednesday.
(December 17, 2009) Beijing can save at least 190 million cu m water per year – double the capacity of Guanting Reservoir – if the extravagant lifestyle of its residents can be controlled, a leading NGO said after the water price hearing yesterday.
(December 14, 2009) “Unfortunately we live in a system where our unelected leaders push ahead with mad dreams rather than take responsibility after bringing disasters to the ordinary people,” says Dai Qing, a conservationist who has spent time in China’s most notorious political prison for her criticism of government-led environmental destruction. “But perhaps if the leaders really believe their slogans and really decide it’s time to live in harmony with nature, then this will be the last mad mega-project we see in China.”
(December 9, 2009) More than 760 residents of Junxian County in the Danjiangkou Reservoir area on Tuesday began new lives 300 km away with uncertainty and hope. They were among 330,000 migrants expected to be relocated by 2014 for the multi-million-dollar project, which is designed to channel water from southern regions, mainly the Yangtze, China’s longest river, to the arid north, including Beijing.
(December 8, 2009) More than 760 residents in central China began to move to their new homes Tuesday, making way for the giant south-to-north water diversion project.
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