Beijing’s three suburban districts, Pinggu, Changping and Huairou, constitute the “emergency water supply” for urban Beijing and are supposed to provide residents with essential drinking water in case of drought. However, these “emergency” reserves are being called upon increasing frequently by city authorities. In a telephone interview, an employee from the Beijing Water Affairs Bureau told NewsChina that due to years of drought in Beijing, the three districts have become the main source of the capital’s daily water supply. On March 18, 2010 Water Affairs Bureau Chief Cheng Jing announced that Beijing is now looking for other “emergency water resources” beyond the suburbs to relieve the increasing water shortages that continue to plague the city. As with Pinggu District, Beijing’s water shortages are also taking their toll on neighboring Hebei Province. The province’s annual water demand is around 28 billion cubic yards, but a surface water capacity of merely 22 billion cubic yards means the shortfall has to be compensated for by large-scale groundwater extraction.
Wei Zhimin, a water conservation expert, told media that Hebei provides the water reserves for both Beijing and Tianjin, two of China’s largest urban areas. When necessary, it has to transfer its provincial reserves to these two cities, regardless of the cost to the province. Miyun and Guanting reservoirs were jointly constructed by Hebei Province and the Beijing Municipality in the 1950s, designed to serve both Beijing and cities in Hebei. However, these two vast reservoirs have since been set aside to meet the growing needs of Beijing’s burgeoning population.
During the 2008 Olympic Games, the central government worked out a plan to secure the water supply for the city by further draining Hebei’s resources. Four reservoirs in the province: Gangnan, Huangbizhuang, Wangkuai and Xidayang, were required to provide Beijing with over 0.5 billion cubic yards of water in a single year. With Hebei’s capacity rapidly depleting, Beijing is also “borrowing” water from other neighboring provinces, including the industrial province of Shanxi. In 2003, Cetian Reservoir in Shanxi was required to transfer 65 million cubic yards of water to Beijing. By October 2008, Shanxi had provided a total of over 0.3 billion cubic yards of drinking water to the capital. Now Beijing’s two major reservoirs – Miyun and Guanting – are mainly fed by water siphoned from Hebei and Shanxi. According to estimates released in February by the Beijing Water Affairs Bureau, the four Hebei reservoirs will have to provide Beijing with 0.26 to 0.4 billion cubic yards of water in 2010.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
A few hundred miles from parched Hengshui, residents in urban Beijing have little idea of the extent of the capital’s contribution to the problem.
Since 2008, in order to cultivate Beijing’s green image, the municipal government filled up most of the city’s dried-out rivers and canals with water pumped in from other provinces. The trees, grass and flowers that have been planted along the city’s canals and streets require regular irrigation. Moreover, the growing taste among Beijing’s surging elite for luxury facilities like golf courses, executive car washes, ski resorts and spa centers has exacerbated the problem.
Golf courses have suffered the harshest criticism from environmentalists, with turf the thirstiest of all plants. There are over 70 golf courses throughout Beijing, of which only three are officially registered as such with the city authorities. In fact, a State regulation on land property development introduced in 2004 expressly forbids development of golfing facilities in the Beijing Municipality without a special permit.
However, the rising popularity of golf among city elites means that the green light is often given to developers in closeddoor deals with local authorities, resulting in golf courses innocuously labeled “parks” in official documentation.
A manager of a privately-owned 18-hole “park” in Beijing’s northeastern outskirts revealed to our reporter that his golf course required 5,000 cubic yards of water daily in summertime. “Ours is just a medium-sized course,” the manager, who preferred to remain anonymous, told NewsChina, adding that Huabin golf course (Reignwood Pine Valley) in Changping district, Beijing’s largest golf course, is four times the size. Despite encouragement from the Beijing Water Affairs Bureau for golf courses to upgrade their sprinkler systems to use recycled water to irrigate the ground, “About 90 percent of the 70 golf courses in Beijing still use drinkable groundwater to irrigate the turf,” an editor from Golf Week magazine told NewsChina. This alone requires at least 360,000 cubic yards of groundwater daily.
The price of water used by golf courses is rated separately from that used by households, according to the State-issued water pricing system, as golf courses are listed as a special water consuming industry. It was hoped that higher water rates would help curb golf course development or at least serve as an incentive to economize water usage by switching to recycled water. However, due to 90 percent of Beijing golf courses being classified as “parks,” managers are able to evade these rates.
In mid-May, while farmer Wang Qiuquan complained that his village lacked the water resources to irrigate their fields, sprinklers at a lush golf course in downtown Beijing scattered water over the lush green turf.
June 2010