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Water shortage looms large in Guangdong
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Alfred Zhang
ON paper, Guangdong has plenty of water. The province gets 1,777 millimetres of rain per year, while 419 billion cubic metres are available for use. Water resources per head in the province stand at 3,000 cubic metres.
Unfortunately, the reality is not so happy, and the prospect of water shortages in the province is causing growing concern.
While the Pearl River Delta region is rich in water resources, huge amounts of polluted water flow into rivers from factories without being treated. Experts noted that the present volume of drainage is close to 10 billion cubic metres, a whopping one seventh of the nation's total.
Careless waste of the precious resource is also a major problem. Only 40-75 per cent of farming water and 20-40 per cent of the industrial water has been reused, while almost no water for daily life gets reused.
In the east and west of Guangdong, riverbeds are not deep enough to hold rainfall, and the landscape makes dams difficult to build in the north where water leaks through limestone cracks.
In north Guangdong, the need for water in farming is far greater than supply as the areas are underdeveloped and short of finicial funds, increasing the risks of drought. People in these areas even have problems just having enough drinking water as the lack of funds make the creating of water-channeling projects impossible.
In light of this grave situation, Guangdong's water conservancy administration recently vowed to invest 65.9 billion yuan (US$7.91 billion), during the 10th Five-Year period to tackle the problem, and at the same time build up reliable and powerful systems for disaster prevention and relief, water supply and water ecology.
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