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**Guest** · 05 Feb 09,, 05:43

North China to Face Continuous Drought 2009-02-04
The China Meteorological Administration says that severe drought in northern China is expected to continue as no major rainfall is forecast for the next ten days.

The drought has affected sixty percent of the wheat crops in the central province of Henan and seventy percent of the wheat in the eastern province of Anhui.

Some areas have barely had any rainfall since November. Precipitation has been estimated to be 70 to 90 percent lower than in previous years.

Yang Guiming, chief forecaster with China's Central Meteorological Observatory, explains the reasons behind the severe drought.

"This winter, cold air in China is strong, while the warm air is relatively weak, and this has caused lower levels of precipitation across northern China."

Yang Guiming adds that although northern China may witness some rainfall in the following days, drought relief will be limited.

"From February 7th until the 9th, some areas in northern China will see rainfall averaging less than three millimetres. This level of rainfall will not play an effective role in relieving the drought."

China's Ministry of Agriculture has sent 12 working teams of experts to the drought-hit provinces, to instruct farmers on drought relief.

The Ministry of Finance has also allocated 100 million yuan, or some 14 and half million U.S. dollars, in emergency funding to help stricken farmers.

http://eng.wcetv.com/1/2009/02/04/122s10118.htm

**snowhole** · 05 Feb 09,, 05:49

Pictures from Netease.

Lake dried out completely outside Zhenzhou, capital of Henan Province

Kids playing in what's left of a pond in Tangyin County, Henan Province

These wheat could only be used as firewood. Photo from Henan Business Daily

**Merlin** · 05 Feb 09,, 07:58

This may be mainly due to climate change, or may be not. It comes at a bad time for China.

**Guest** · 05 Feb 09,, 11:50

Originally posted by Merlin View Post

This may be mainly due to climate change, or may be not. It comes at a bad time for China.

Water shortage has long been a severe issue here in North China.
This drought has been exacerbateing the problem immeasurably!
Pray for torrential rain! I miss the torrential rains of the Olympics in last August!;)

**snowhole** · 08 Feb 09,, 19:54

Xinhua calls it the worst drought in 50 years now.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20...t_10778515.htm

China earmarks 86.7 bln yuan for drought relief
www.chinaview.cn 2009-02-07 14:53:48 Print

BEIJING, Feb. 7 (Xinhua) -- The Ministry of Finance (MOF) on Friday allocated 86.7 billion yuan (about 12.69 billion U.S. dollars) from its reserve to drought-hit areas in relief funds.

Of the total, 71.6 billion yuan will be given to farmers for buying relief materials, and the other 15.1 billion yuan will go to grain producers to supplement incomes.

The central government announced Thursday it would earmark 300 million yuan for local governments, in addition to 100 million yuan previously allocated.

The MOF ordered local governments to channel the funds to farmers as soon as possible. In the worst drought-stricken provinces, the funds should be given to farmers within one month.

Persistent drought has hit most parts of northern China, including Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Shandong, Qinghai and Gansu, posting a several threat to the country's summer harvest of wheat.

The drought is also affecting rice-growing Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces

The area of affected crops has expanded to 161 million mu (10.73 hectares). 4.37 million people and 2.1 million heads of livestock are facing drinking water shortages, according to data released by the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters.

MOA data showed more than 2.3 million mu (153,300 hectares) of wheat seedlings in Henan, Anhui and Shandong provinces had perished.

China declared the highest level of emergency on Thursday in response to the rare drought which began in November.

President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have ordered all-out efforts to combat the severe drought in the country's vast wheat-growing area to ensure a good summer harvest.

On Saturday, the country's economic planner also issued an emergency notification to underscore the importance of drought-relief efforts.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) urged governments at all levels to speed up construction of water resources projects to meet the demand of agricultural production.

The NDRC has allocated 11.8 billion yuan to rural areas in the fourth quarter last year for local governments to build water facilities and buy water-saving equipment and machinery products, in an effort to ensure water safety and water supply.

More than 4.3 billion yuan was given to eight worst-stricken regions, including Henan, Hebei, Shandong, Anhui and Shanxi.
Editor: David Du

**xinhui** · 08 Feb 09,, 22:01

seems to be a front page item everywhere I looked in China.

Rain, river diversion plans ease China drought
Sun Feb 8, 2009 7:37am EST

(Adds Premier Wen Jiabao, rainmaking, river diversion plans)

BEIJING, Feb 8 (Reuters) - Rain fell in drought-stricken north central China after the government brought in rain-making scientists, and officials have promised to divert two major rivers to help farmers, state media said on Sunday.

Over the weekend Premier Wen Jiabao visited drought-stricken areas, where the government has declared a state of emergency. He called the relief work "top priority", and a key part of efforts to revive the economy amid the global financial woes.

"It is of vital significance to the overall economy to boost steady growth of grain production and farmers' income" as China is in a key stage to cope with the global financial crisis," the official Xinhua agency quoted him saying.

The government has already taken a small step towards protecting rural cash flow, raising the minimum price paid for a tonne of wheat purchased by the state reserves system by 200 yuan a tonne, Xinhua said. It did not report the new floor price.

Wen told local governments to speed up water management projects, guarantee supplies of fertilizer and pesticide, and subsidize purchases of farm machinery for those in greatest need.

China has earmarked 86.7 billion yuan ($12.69 billion) for handouts to badly-hit farmers and another 400 million yuan for drought relief work by local authorities.

Experts say that Beijing's moves to fund last-minute irrigation could fend off a crisis, reviving crops that might otherwise have been left to die by farmers struggling with low prices and oversupply.

RAIN-MAKING

Weather officials have also been trying to improve the situation by boosting the amount of water on the ground, deploying rainmaking tools including cloud-seeding rockets across key wheat-growing areas.

The bread-basket states affected by the lack of water saw anything from 0.5 to 5 millimetres of rain after the bid to open the skies, Xinhua reported.

Areas still dry also saw an encouraging gathering of clouds.

To help tide over any shortfalls water from the country's longest river, the Yangtze, will be diverted north to meet growing demand as temperatures rise, the report quoted a Ministry of Water Resources official saying.

Water supply on the Yellow river will also be boosted, as officials open dams upriver from the worst-hit provinces. Some 5 billion cubic metres has already been released, Xinhua said.

Eight provinces, and around half of China's wheat growing areas, are at risk. So far 10.7 million hectares of crop have been affected along with 4.4 million people, the report said.

In March most of the area is expected to receive nearly normal rainfall, or just slightly less than usual, state media have quoted the director of the National Climate Centre saying. ($1=6.834 Yuan) (Reporting by Emma Graham-Harrison; Editing by Mike Nesbit)

**Guest** · 09 Feb 09,, 14:02

Then Beijing is the worst hit city in the worst drought for decades in China.
The city hasn't seen any rainfall for over 100 days so far in this winter, breaking a record in the past 38 years.

Here is video link.
http://www.dahe.cn/xwzx/zt/hnzt/2009...05_1479988.htm

**Guest** · 09 Feb 09,, 14:03

Beijing is desperately thirsty!

**xinhui** · 09 Feb 09,, 19:31

China Uses Planes as Rainmakers in Drought Areas (Update1)
Email | Print | A A A

By Winnie Zhu

Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- China, the world�s biggest grain producer, is using its air force to try to make rain in rural areas struck by the nation�s worst drought in five decades.

Two planes were dispatched from Guangzhou to the provinces of Anhui and Henan to battle the drought, the official Xinhua News Agency said today. Yesterday, parts of Gansu, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Shanxi and Hubei provinces received as much as 5.5 millimeters (0.2 inches) of rain after artillery shells and rockets were fired into clouds to disperse chemicals, the China Meteorological Administration said today.

China has raised its drought-emergency alert to the highest level for the first time to stave off the threat to crops, livestock and rural incomes. President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have ordered �all-out efforts� to fight the dry spell.

�At this critical time, ensuring stable growth of grain production and farmers� income is related to the nation�s overall economy and is of great significance,� Wen said during his visit to Henan province yesterday and today, according to China National Radio Web site.

The Ministry of Finance allocated 86.7 billion yuan ($12.7 billion) from its reserves as relief funds for drought-stricken regions on Feb. 6.

China will also use water from the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, the nation�s two longest, to irrigate farmland in the parched regions, the Xinhua News Agency said today, citing the Ministry of Water Resources.

Irrigating Crops

About half of 160 million mu (10.6 million hectares) of winter wheat hurt by the drought had been irrigated as of Feb. 6, according to a statement on the government Web site yesterday.

China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. and PetroChina Co., the nation�s two biggest oil companies, were urged by the government to boost supplies to rural areas to help counter the drought, the National Development and Reform Commission, the country�s top economic planner, said yesterday.

State Grid Corp. of China., the larger of the nation�s two electricity distributors, also pledged to ensure power supplies to drought-hit areas. The company plans to allocate 500 million yuan to build grids in Henan province, which will benefit 2.5 million mu of farmland, it said in an e-mailed statement today.

Parts of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, Henan, Hubei and Anhui provinces may get as much as 8 millimeters of rainfall today, which would help relieve the drought �to some extent,� the Meteorological Administration said today on its Web site.

To contact the reporter on this story: Winnie Zhu in Shanghai at [email protected]

**xinhui** · 09 Feb 09,, 22:48

I follow this issue for few years now and it is getting so little attention from outside but for the old-handred-names, it is a huge deal.

Delays block China's giant water scheme
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7864390.stm
By Michael Bristow
BBC News, Beijing

Dance
Villagers have used a number of methods to encourage the rains

A multi-billion-dollar project to divert water from southern China to the arid north is already four years behind schedule.

The news comes as parts of northern and central China struggle to cope with severe drought.

Officials recently admitted that water would not flow along the project's central route - a total of three are planned - until 2014.

But there appears to be a difference of opinion about what is actually causing the delay.

One official said it was because of environmental concerns, another said it was taking longer than expected to resettle affected farmers.

This is not the final answer because the water being transferred is simply not enough.
Ma Jun, Chinese water expert

Whatever the reason, the entire scheme is unlikely to solve northern China's dire water shortage, even when it is finished.

To solve that problem, experts say the region must conserve what little water it has.

Environmental problems

China first started considering building the South-to-North Water Diversion Project in the 1950s.

The need is obvious. An area along three major rivers in northern China has 35% of the country's population, but only 7% of its water resources.

A recent severe drought is a reminder of just how dry some parts of China can be.

Nearly four million people are short of water. Livestock and crops are also under threat.

It is problems like this that prompted numerous studies into the water diversion scheme, which finally gained the go-ahead in 2001.

The $62bn (�42bn) project includes eastern, central and western routes that will divert water from China's Yangtze River to the parched north.

Some parts of the eastern and central routes have already been completed, although work has yet to start on the western route.

Map
Three separate routes would bring water from south to north

China has shown in the past that it is unafraid to tackle massive engineering projects, such as the Three Gorges Dam. This scheme is no different.

Engineers will have to tunnel under the Yellow River in two places to send the water north.

The recently announced delay has occurred on the central route, which is nearly 1,300km (800 miles) long and stretches from Hubei Province to Beijing.

One project official, Wang Fangyu, told a conference that environmental concerns were holding up the scheme.

FUTURE WATER STRESS
Water map

Interactive map: Water stress in a changing world

The main problem appears to involve the Danjiangkou Reservoir, which is being enlarged as part of the central water route.

The reservoir's dam is also being heightened.

Mr Wang said enlarging the reservoir would have a "profound" influence on the area's natural environment, according to a report of the conference in the Yangtze Business News.

He said the extended dam would prevent flooding downstream from the reservoir on the Han River, a tributary of the Yangtze.

But he also told the conference: "When the project is finished, the Han River's ability to clean itself will be reduced.

There is no doubt that China is facing a major challenge in managing its scarce water resources to sustain economic growth in the years ahead
David Dollar, head of the World Bank in China

"This means that in the lower reaches of the river in Hubei we will need to build even more pollution treatment facilities."

This is why the central route is being delayed by four years, said Mr Wang.

But the minister in charge of the diversion project, Zheng Jiyao, recently denied that environmental problems were the cause of the delay.

He blamed it on the need to relocate 300,000 people to make way for the reservoir's expansion.

This is proving a challenge because the area is already densely populated and there is little land for migrants.

Emergency

There are other controversies too - not least whether the western route is even viable.

It will be built on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and there is a debate about what impact this will have on the local environment.

And there is a bigger problem.

Experts say the billions of tonnes of water that will be sent north will still not satisfy northern China's water demands, even when the project is completely finished.
Yangtze River dried up in Chongqing
Water will be diverted from the Yangtze River to the dry north

Chinese water expert Ma Jun said: "It is an emergency project because certain cities in the north are seeing dire water shortages.

"But in the long term this is not the final answer because the water being transferred is simply not enough."

Mr Ma said that water supplies in the north cannot expand any further and so the government needs to encourage water conservation if it is to find a permanent solution.

"There is huge potential, but it hasn't yet been fully tapped," added the author of China's Water Crisis.

A recent World Bank report made a similar call for improved water conservation, and recommended increasing its price to reflect its scarcity.

The report gives a grim account of the various water problems facing some parts of China, which for years have suffered from shortages, pollution and flooding.

"There is no doubt that China is facing a major challenge in managing its scarce water resources to sustain economic growth in the years ahead," said David Dollar, head of the World Bank in China.

Even if everything goes according to plan, China's south-north diversion project will only solve some of those problems.

**xinhui** · 09 Feb 09,, 22:49

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1161...s_asia_pageone

China Fights Growing Water Crisis

Ambitious River Project May Aid North but Angers Environmentalists
By SHAI OSTER
October 20, 2006

BEIJING -- The Yellow River, known as the cradle of Chinese civilization, sometimes runs dry before it finishes its 5,464-kilometer journey to the ocean, a dramatic symptom of China's mounting water crisis.

Now, an engineering project as ambitious -- and controversial -- as the Three Gorges Dam is attempting to save the river by diverting billions of tons of water from China's flood-prone south to the Yellow River and the cities that rely on it.

Critics of the project fear it will waste tens of billions of dollars, hurt the environment and offer only a temporary fix to northern China's chronic water shortage. But water officials see it as the only way to provide enough water to China's burgeoning cities while taking pressure off the overburdened Yellow River and the north's badly depleted underground aquifers.

As the debate intensifies, the lack of water in the historically arid north is so severe that China's planners have quickened construction of a part of the canal network to make sure there is enough water to supply the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

"This is a project we have to do. There has to be some sacrifice and a compromise between environmental protection and business development," says Prof. Liu Changming, an academician at Beijing Normal University.

Mr. Liu is a member of a group of scientists working with the Yellow River Conservancy Commission, which is trying to minimize the environmental impact of the part of the water project that would divert water from the headwaters of the Yangtze in Tibet to the Yellow River.

Critics and proponents of the project alike acknowledge the severity of China's water shortage in the north. The world's most populous nation has on average one-quarter of the per capita water resources of the world average; in Beijing, it's one-thirtieth. Some 136 cities face severe water shortages. Irrigation for agriculture takes up most water use, but industrial and residential use is growing fastest as wealth increases.

Pollution is worsening the crisis. More than 300 million people, or almost a quarter of the population, lack access to clean drinking water, as more than half of major waterways are badly polluted, according to government statistics. One-quarter of the waterways can't be used for industry or irrigation. According to a report by brokerage firm CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, water shortages on average reduced industrial output $25 billion in an average year and cut industrial output $19 billion a year.

If no steps are taken, Beijing could face a shortfall of one billion metric tons of water a year by 2010, estimates Ma Jun

of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, an environmental group compiling a database of pollution figures on China's waterways.

But there is no consensus for how to solve the problem. Government officials, led by the Ministry of Water Resources and the Yellow River commission, have pushed a plan first raised in 1952 by Mao Zedong to transfer water from China's lush south to the dry north. Beijing, wary of criticism about its environmental policies, is allowing some public debate over the project's scope, unlike the Three Gorges project, which tolerated no dissent.

The Yellow River, China's second-longest river, is as central to the nation's myth as the Mississippi is to Americans. It played a crucial role in early Chinese history going back thousands of years and passes by major cities such as Lanzhou, Wuhai, Baotou, Kaifeng and Jinan. When the lower reaches of the river went dry for most of 1997, it sparked shock and soul-searching among Chinese. The river, which gets its name from the silt it carries, floods periodically because the river bed in some places is higher than the surrounding land, earning it the name "China's Sorrow."

At the end of 2001, Beijing announced it would launch the South-to-North Water Diversion, to divert water from the Yantgze River basin in central China north to the Yellow River and its tributaries.

The entire project, which could take decades to complete at an estimated cost of more than $60 billion, would build three canals along the east, center and west to carry nearly 45 billion tons of water north. The eastern part of the project would upgrade the Grand Canal, the longest in the world, stretching 1,800 kilometers and started some 1,400 years ago.

The first phase of the project will bring water to the eastern province of Shandong and the port city of Tianjin by 2008.

Three years later, by 2010, Beijing wants to complete the central canal from a tributary of the Yangtze River up to Beijing -- mostly along open-air canals, but eventually bypassing the Yellow River via an underground tunnel.

Some 220,000 people along the central canal will be relocated by the route, which cuts through historic buildings and archaeological ruins. Higher compensation for farmland has helped push up costs. According to the official state-run Xinhua News Agency, in May, the director of the diversion project, Zhang Jiyao, said costs for the first two routes had been revised up 80% to $28 billion.

A final route in the west would transfer water along canals carved through rock from the headwaters of the Yantze in Tibet to the Yellow River. Construction is slated to start in 2010.

The scale of the project dwarfs even the hundreds of miles of levees and canals of the California Aqueduct in the U.S. that feed that state's agriculture -- and the controversy is just as fierce. Just as projects in the U.S. to bring water to big cities far away from natural supplies have had unintended consequences, environmentalists are worried about similar fallout in China.

This past summer, Lin Ling, a professor at the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences, published a book collecting the work of 60 scientists and scholars that questions the proposed Tibetan route.

"I still insist that such a big project, like the South-to-North Water Diversion, should be discussed widely by officials, experts and scholars before it is finally decided by the government to avoid possible big mistakes in the future," Mr. Lin says. "It's 2006, we still have enough time to have a thorough discussion and research before the west project is kicked off in 2010."

The book's contributors argue that the western canal would cause more ecological damage than good. And it would deprive hydroelectric dams powering the southwestern province of Sichuan. The book came out just as people in Sichuan were lining up at water trucks during an unusual drought, the area's worst in 50 years.

Many worry that funneling water north fails to address problems of waste and inefficiency. If the project goes through, Beijing could still find itself short of water again in a few decades, says Elizabeth Economy, director for Asian Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of "The River Runs Black," a book on environmental degradation.

Instead, she and others argue, the solution should be to encourage conservation and better manage waterworks.

Some within the government appear to agree. Qiu Baoxing, vice minister of construction, says that better conservation and recycling of just one-third of the water currently used in China's cities would be equal to the total volume of water that would flow in the new canals. Digging canals to alleviate shortages "would disturb the natural water cycle," he told the official China Daily last month.

Meanwhile, human-rights advocates worry that the forced relocations could spark a repeat of the abuses seen in the forced migrations of more than 1.1 million people to accommodate the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River.

--Sue Feng contributed to this article.

Write to Shai Oster at [email protected]

**xinhui** · 09 Feb 09,, 22:50

China delays finishing mammoth water project: report

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has postponed completing a huge water transfer project to quench its national capital's thirst, citing stubborn pollution worries for pushing the target date back four years to 2014, official media said on Saturday.

The South-North Water Diversion scheme will channel water from the Yangtze River and its tributaries to ease shortages across northern China, where population growth and frantic industrialization have drained dams and underground reserves.

The main "central route" stretching 1,267 kms (787 miles) from the Danjiangkou Dam in central Hubei province to Beijing was due to be finished in 2010.

But not now.

Hubei officials said on Friday that pollution and ecological strains in the rivers feeding the dam will make that impossible, Hubei's Changjiang Times said, in a report reprinted by the official Xinhua news agency ( www.xinhuanet.com ).

"To prevent ecological and environmental risks to the South-North Water Diversion Project, completion of the central route will be delayed for 4 years," said Wang Fenyu, a Hubei official working on the scheme, according to the paper.

"This means Beijing residents will have to wait another 6 years before they can drink high-quality water from the Dankiangkou Dam."

Until now, officials have given no sign the high-profile project would be delayed. The other, eastern route of the project has also been beset by pollution problems.

The hold-up could bring planning headaches for China's national capital, which supports a population of 17 million on dwindling local water sources.

In the absence of the Yangtze tributary supplies, Beijing has been pumping additional water from neighboring Hebei province, which itself suffers severe shortfalls.

A Hubei environmental official, Zou Qingping, said that once the central route draws water from the Danjiangkou Dam, reducing flows along the Han River that cuts past the dam, "water quality problems will become even more serious" for the province.

Wang, the project official, said this meant "Hubei must build even more water treatment plants and ecological restoration facilities."

There was no mention of the delay on the South-North scheme's website ( www.nsbd.gov.cn ), and on the weekend its officials could not be contacted for comment.

Critics of the project have long said the scheme to replenish north China from far-off rivers risks dangerously destabilizing already battered water systems.

(Reporting by Chris Buckley; Editing by Jerry Norton)

**Guest** · 12 Feb 09,, 15:31

Thank goodness! At long last we are having rain here in Beijing after months of severe drought!

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Drought threatens China wheat production

Drought threatens China wheat production

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