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Beijing's Tap Running Dry As Population Surges
Beijing (AFP) Dec 12, 2006 Beijing is facing an escalating water crisis amid relentless population growth, with 2010 seen as a crucial time when China's capital may have to take drastic measures, state media said Wednesday. There was enough water in Beijing to adequately supply just over 14 million people in 2005, but the city had 15 million permanent residents and four million migrant workers at the end of last year, Xinhua news agency said. The situation, complicated by a drought that has gripped northern China for years, will steadily worsen by 2010, when another three million people are expected to have joined the city's permanent population, it said. To deal with the problem, the city may have to slash water consumption to levels "that would result in water rationing and higher prices that would affect the quality of the average resident's life," Xinhua said, citing a study in the China Economic Weekly. The city government is pinning its remaining hopes on central government polices aimed at producing more geographically balanced growth throughout the country. Like many cities leading China's economic boom, Beijing has become a beacon to vast numbers of migrant workers from rural areas, with the prospect of work on 2008 Olympic Games construction projects serving as an added lure. Water has become one of the major evironmental problems in China in recent years. More than 70 percent of rivers and lakes are polluted, while underground water supplies in 90 percent of Chinese cities are contaminated, previous state press reports have said.
Source: Agence France-Presse Related Links Water, Water Everywhere and Not A Drop To Drink...
NASA Outlines Recent Changes in Earth's Freshwater Distribution
Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 13, 2006Recent space observations of freshwater storage by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) are providing a new picture of how Earth's most precious natural resource is distributed globally and how it is changing. Researchers are using the mission's almost five-year data record to estimate seasonal water storage variations in more than 50 river basins that cover most of Earth's land area. |
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