While people in neighboring provinces chase groundwater resources deeper into the earth, Beijing’s demand for this most precious of resources continues to grow.
By Wang Yan
Sixty-year-old Wang Qiuquan has been living in the small village of Liuzhuang, Hebei Province, all his life. When this year’s planting season began, his family, like many others in the region, had to rely on wells to irrigate their 10 mu (1.67 acre) cotton field due to poor rainfall. However, mounting evidence suggests that the Hebei’s underground water resources are rapidly disappearing.
In the 1980s, Wang recalls, water gushed out when a well was sunk to a depth of barely 30 feet. By the 1990s, however, wells had to be 130 feet deep before they hit underground reservoirs. This average depth increased to 190 feet in 2000. Now, the depth of wells in the village has hit 290 feet. Wang told NewsChina that water shortages are already a feature of daily life in Liuzhuang. All 30 or so households rely on three motorized wells sunk in the 1980s for domestic and agricultural use. The villagers have to pay extra money each year to allow the wells to be sunk deeper into the earth as reservoirs continue to dry up.
“I’ve noticed a sharp fall in the underground water level in our village since 2000,” Wang told NewsChina. “But we are better off than the neighboring villages. There, whenever there’s a drought, people have difficulty watering their fields due to the lack of groundwater.”
Despite never having attended school, Wang doubts that Liuzhuang’s meager consumption can be the cause of the rapid depletion of its groundwater.
Drying Up
Hebei Province in North China covers a total area of 72,470 square miles, encircling the Beijing and Tianjin municipalities, and is the main source of water for both cities. According to research published by the Hebei Provincial Water Resource Bureau, overextraction may cause the local groundwater level to drop by a further 130 feet by 2030.
In the past decade, drought has been a recurring annual problem in the North China Plain. According to an official report on underground water reserves released by the Hebei provincial government in 2002, most areas in Hebei, including the major cities of Tangshan, Baoding, Shijiazhuang, Xingtai, Hengshui, Handan and Cangzhou, were already suffering severe groundwater depletion due to over-extraction.
In recent years, land subsidence has begun to affect rural communities. According to media reports, a village in Xingtai City suffered serious ground subsidence in 2005 which created sinkholes under local houses. Local villager Dong Jinghua told media, “When it rained, the house would make cracking noises, and my family didn’t dare stay inside in case it collapsed.” Experts later found the region’s massive depletion of groundwater was the root cause of the subsidence. Underground water depletion has even begun to encroach on the outskirts of Beijing. In the mountainous Pinggu District on the northeastern city limits, local resident Wang Changlin told NewsChina that the drinkable groundwater level has dropped to 260 feet, compared to 30 feet in the 1980s.
Slaking Beijing’s Thirst
“Underground water in Pinggu is mostly diverted to the Beijing metropolitan area,” said Wang. “Because Pinggu is listed as Beijing’s main water source.”
According to Cheng Jing, director of the Beijing Municipal Water Affairs Bureau, the city’s annual water consumption is 4 to 5 billion cubic yards. Because of surface water shortages, over half of Beijing’s water supply comes from groundwater extraction.
