China's Water Boondoggle-In-Waiting

China suffers from what a lot of countries must endure: too much water in the "wrong" (as far as humans are concerned) places. Southern China is relatively water-rich compared to northern China. The North China Plain, whose ground water provides much of the water to 400,000,000 people, is a classic case of ground water overdrafting. There just are too many people sucking on too many straws, all inserted into the same, shrinking "drink".

No fear, the Chinese government is coming to the "rescue". In 2002 it decided to implement a plan suggested by the environmental visionary Mao Zedong over 50 years ago. Recall that Mao was the guy who ordered the extermination of songbirds because they ate seeds and grain, oblivious to the fact that they kept insect pests in check. Mao, ever perceptive, noted that the north didn't have enough water, but the south did, so why not transfer (Mao said "borrow") water from China's great southern river, the Yangtze, to its great northern river, the Yellow (or Huang).  So now the government will hydrologically connect the north and south.

It's interesting to note that Chinese leader Hu Jintao is a hydraulic engineer.

Hey, it's easier to move water than people, right? All the Chinese have to do is build some dams, install some pipes, pump the water over 15,000-foot mountains, and presto! Water!

The great South-to-North Water Transfer Project must have engineers everywhere salivating and environmentalists reeling. It'll cost about $60B, require prodigious amounts of energy, displace millions of people, and devastate ecosystems.

Jim Belshaw, the excellent columnist of the Albuquerque Journal, alerted me to the excellent article by Christina Larson, "The Middle Kingdom's Dilemma", in this month's Washington Monthly.

The accompanying picture, that of the frozen Yangtze River, is from Larson's article.

She describes the water plan and one geologist's attempt to see whether the scheme will work. The fact that the government has not stopped Yong Yang attests to the fact that things have changed somewhat in China.

Here's a copy of the article in case the link is inactive:

Download yangtze_river_article.doc 

In fact, there is a nascent environmental movement in China that has progressed to the point where the government has admitted that poor planning the Three Gorges Dam project had created a potential "environmental catastrophe."

Will the environmentalists be able to stop the project? Time will tell, but my money's on the government.

"Southern water is plentiful; northern water scarce. Borrowing some water would be good." -- Mao Zedong, 1952.

Comments

[Abby]

Thanks for this post.

I just watched a wonderful documentary produced by PBS called "China From the Inside". It was a four-part series, in which they detailed the South-to-North Water Diversion project in China (in the Shifting Nature section). Apparently, as far as people affected and scale of the project, it will be even larger than the Three Gorges Dam project... and the Dam continues to have negative environmental and social consequences for the region.

http://www.pbs.org/kqed/chinainside/

[Michael]

Hi, Abby.

You are welcome, and thank you for the PBS link. I will take a look.

India is also planning a huge diversion, its River-Linking Project (RLP), which would move Ganges-Brahmaputra water to its southern states. Needless to say, Bangladesh is not thrilled.

Here's the link:

http://www.asiawaterwire.net/node/84