FEATURE-Beijing's Olympic thirst drains parched farmers
(The following is an updated version of a feature first issued on Jan. 23)
By Chris Buckley
BAODING, China, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Dusty villages far from China's capital are paying their own price for the government's will to stage a postcard-perfect Olympic Games, enduring shrunken crops, drained wells and discontent over lost land.
China rushed to finish canals able to pump 300 million cubic metres of "emergency" water to Beijing for the "green" Games, ensuring a lush host city greets the world in August.
The 309 km (192 miles) of channels cut into Hebei province, next to the capital, stand ready to pump dam reserves from farm country beset by long-term drought and environmental strains.
Villagers who watched a "100-day battle" to complete the main canal by late April wondered how much of the price of a leafy Beijing they should pay.
"I don't care about the Olympic Games, they're too far from here," said Liu Xige, a wiry middle-aged farmer from Gaochang Village.
The canal lay a few dozen metres (yards) away, a barely finished stretch of concrete. Farmers had planted corn, rather than wheat, for lack of water, he said.
"We haven't had enough water for planting, with all the limits we've had on irrigation. We've had rain, and that's helped, but it's been tough enough."
China is determined to make 2008 a live-to-air affirmation of its economic achievements. But Beijing's scheme to draw water from its parched neighbour dramatises the environmental blowback from the country's explosive, city-skewed growth.
"There have been many basic problems with the geology and local circumstances that just weren't anticipated," Dai Qing, a Beijing environmental activist long critical of government policy, said of the Olympics water project.
"But the fundamental one is they don't have enough water in northern China to begin with. Why should they pay such a heavy price for Beijing?"
SACRIFICES
The Olympic plan is one part of the larger South-to-North Water Transfer Project planned to tap the Yangtze River and tributaries by 2010 and quench northern China, where explosive industrial and urban growth has exhausted rivers and aquifers.
Officials first hoped the whole central route of the project would be ready for the Games, when water demand is expected to spike by up to 30 percent above average, reaching 2.75 million cubic metres a day.
But as that work lagged, the government opted to build the most northern leg first, recruiting Hebei and neighbouring Shanxi province to set aside "back-up" water to supplement river and rain and underground sources.
The scheme has put most pressure on Hebei, one of the country's most water-short provinces after a decade-long drought, which nonetheless is the source of about 80 percent of Beijing's water, according to province officials.
Hebei ranks near the bottom of China's 31 provinces and province-status cities in water resources per head, with one eighth of the national average, according to province estimates.
Around Baoding city alone, in a mostly rural area criss-crossed by the project, 31,000 residents have lost land and perhaps homes for its sake, according to the city water office. Many more have been displaced in other parts of Hebei.
Even in this tightly controlled state where most people are proud to hold the Olympics, Hebei's gripes have echoed in local news reports and the national parliament.
"Conflicts over water between Beijing and Hebei have been chronic," said Liu Changming, a water engineer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who advised officials about the scheme. "But there was no other choice. The Olympics are a major national event for China, so sacrifices had to be made."
The water for the expanses of greenery and waterways this month will be pumped from surface and underground sources already battered by over-use, said Probe International, a Canadian conservation group, in a recent report.
"With each new project to tap water somewhere else, demand for water only increases, and at an ever greater cost to China's environment and economy," the report said.
"POOR TO START WITH, AND NOW WE'RE POORER"
In mud-brick village homes of Hebei, these environmental worries translate into everyday anxieties for poor farmers.
Wang Junqiang, a ruddy-faced farmer from Xigu Village near Wangkuai Dam, part of the scheme, spoke of abandoned fields and lost income. Two years ago, Wang said, authorities more than tripled the price of dam water and she abandoned some fields.
"We're too poor to dig our own wells for all the land, and even with the high price of grain, it didn't make sense to grow," she said.
"Of course it affects us. We were poor to start with and now we're poorer".
None of the villagers interviewed denounced the Olympic Games or said they should not be held in Beijing. But most seemed stoic rather than proud about their part in the Games.
"I don't know about the Olympics thing. We're just poor ordinary people. I can't even read," Wang said. "We have to make a living before we can think about big things."
In parts of Hebei, discontent about the canal has been sharper, with petitions and protests sometimes delaying work, according to official speeches.
In September last year, a Baoding official said building of bridges across the canal had lagged, and ruined irrigation channels remained unrepaired, angering displaced farmers.
Perversely for a scheme intended to defeat drought, engineers sometimes struck underground water that hasty blueprints did not anticipate and then pumped away the water, drying up wells, said Wang Lanfen, a deputy Communist Party secretary of Baoding, in a speech on the city water authority Web site (www.bdsl.gov.cn).
Shi Yinzhu, herding sheep near the 100-metre (yard) wide canal in Tang county, said he deepened his family well from a dozen metres below ground to 25 metres after engineers pumped away local underground supplies.
In nearby Gaochang Village, residents said they received 28,000 yuan ($4,100) compensation for every mu (667 square metres or 0.165 acre) of land taken, but some said that was not enough.
"It sounds like a lot of cash, but it's not," said Fan Jianxian, leaning on his bicycle after a morning tending corn.
"The land taken away is lost forever and we don't make anything from it ever again." (Reporting by Chris Buckley; Editing by Brian Rhoads and Jerry Norton) (chris.buckley@reuters.com; +86 10 66271261)
By Chris Buckley
BAODING, China, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Dusty villages far from China's capital are paying their own price for the government's will to stage a postcard-perfect Olympic Games, enduring shrunken crops, drained wells and discontent over lost land.
China rushed to finish canals able to pump 300 million cubic metres of "emergency" water to Beijing for the "green" Games, ensuring a lush host city greets the world in August.
The 309 km (192 miles) of channels cut into Hebei province, next to the capital, stand ready to pump dam reserves from farm country beset by long-term drought and environmental strains.
Villagers who watched a "100-day battle" to complete the main canal by late April wondered how much of the price of a leafy Beijing they should pay.
"I don't care about the Olympic Games, they're too far from here," said Liu Xige, a wiry middle-aged farmer from Gaochang Village.
The canal lay a few dozen metres (yards) away, a barely finished stretch of concrete. Farmers had planted corn, rather than wheat, for lack of water, he said.
"We haven't had enough water for planting, with all the limits we've had on irrigation. We've had rain, and that's helped, but it's been tough enough."
China is determined to make 2008 a live-to-air affirmation of its economic achievements. But Beijing's scheme to draw water from its parched neighbour dramatises the environmental blowback from the country's explosive, city-skewed growth.
"There have been many basic problems with the geology and local circumstances that just weren't anticipated," Dai Qing, a Beijing environmental activist long critical of government policy, said of the Olympics water project.
"But the fundamental one is they don't have enough water in northern China to begin with. Why should they pay such a heavy price for Beijing?"
SACRIFICES
The Olympic plan is one part of the larger South-to-North Water Transfer Project planned to tap the Yangtze River and tributaries by 2010 and quench northern China, where explosive industrial and urban growth has exhausted rivers and aquifers.
Officials first hoped the whole central route of the project would be ready for the Games, when water demand is expected to spike by up to 30 percent above average, reaching 2.75 million cubic metres a day.
But as that work lagged, the government opted to build the most northern leg first, recruiting Hebei and neighbouring Shanxi province to set aside "back-up" water to supplement river and rain and underground sources.
The scheme has put most pressure on Hebei, one of the country's most water-short provinces after a decade-long drought, which nonetheless is the source of about 80 percent of Beijing's water, according to province officials.
Hebei ranks near the bottom of China's 31 provinces and province-status cities in water resources per head, with one eighth of the national average, according to province estimates.
Around Baoding city alone, in a mostly rural area criss-crossed by the project, 31,000 residents have lost land and perhaps homes for its sake, according to the city water office. Many more have been displaced in other parts of Hebei.
Even in this tightly controlled state where most people are proud to hold the Olympics, Hebei's gripes have echoed in local news reports and the national parliament.
"Conflicts over water between Beijing and Hebei have been chronic," said Liu Changming, a water engineer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who advised officials about the scheme. "But there was no other choice. The Olympics are a major national event for China, so sacrifices had to be made."
The water for the expanses of greenery and waterways this month will be pumped from surface and underground sources already battered by over-use, said Probe International, a Canadian conservation group, in a recent report.
"With each new project to tap water somewhere else, demand for water only increases, and at an ever greater cost to China's environment and economy," the report said.
"POOR TO START WITH, AND NOW WE'RE POORER"
In mud-brick village homes of Hebei, these environmental worries translate into everyday anxieties for poor farmers.
Wang Junqiang, a ruddy-faced farmer from Xigu Village near Wangkuai Dam, part of the scheme, spoke of abandoned fields and lost income. Two years ago, Wang said, authorities more than tripled the price of dam water and she abandoned some fields.
"We're too poor to dig our own wells for all the land, and even with the high price of grain, it didn't make sense to grow," she said.
"Of course it affects us. We were poor to start with and now we're poorer".
None of the villagers interviewed denounced the Olympic Games or said they should not be held in Beijing. But most seemed stoic rather than proud about their part in the Games.
"I don't know about the Olympics thing. We're just poor ordinary people. I can't even read," Wang said. "We have to make a living before we can think about big things."
In parts of Hebei, discontent about the canal has been sharper, with petitions and protests sometimes delaying work, according to official speeches.
In September last year, a Baoding official said building of bridges across the canal had lagged, and ruined irrigation channels remained unrepaired, angering displaced farmers.
Perversely for a scheme intended to defeat drought, engineers sometimes struck underground water that hasty blueprints did not anticipate and then pumped away the water, drying up wells, said Wang Lanfen, a deputy Communist Party secretary of Baoding, in a speech on the city water authority Web site (www.bdsl.gov.cn).
Shi Yinzhu, herding sheep near the 100-metre (yard) wide canal in Tang county, said he deepened his family well from a dozen metres below ground to 25 metres after engineers pumped away local underground supplies.
In nearby Gaochang Village, residents said they received 28,000 yuan ($4,100) compensation for every mu (667 square metres or 0.165 acre) of land taken, but some said that was not enough.
"It sounds like a lot of cash, but it's not," said Fan Jianxian, leaning on his bicycle after a morning tending corn.
"The land taken away is lost forever and we don't make anything from it ever again." (Reporting by Chris Buckley; Editing by Brian Rhoads and Jerry Norton) (chris.buckley@reuters.com; +86 10 66271261)
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