Hope for China's parched cities
When Wang Ande grew up in Jinan the provincial capital was famous as "the city of springs". There was water in abundance. It bubbled to the surface, creating pools for children to play in through the hot summers.
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Four decades later, the water has gone, run dry by the demands of industry and households. Now the city sits at the parched crossroads of southern and northern China.
"There is less water now, and it is of worse quality," said Mr Wang, a senior official with the Shandong provincial water bureau in Jinan, a city that is mid-way between Shanghai to the south and Beijing to the north.
But a short drive away are the beginnings of a controversial project to overcome the problem of dwindling water supplies, not just in Mr Wang's home town of Jinan but, most crucially, in major cities to the north, Beijing and Tianjin.
In a country of grand engineering undertakings, the South to North Water Diversion Project is the grandest. To be built over at least three decades, the $60bn project envisages the construction of three huge canals, two of them at least 1,000km long, to take water from the swollen Yangtze river and its tributaries to the dry north. "It is a revolutionary solution to a difficult problem," says Zhou Liming, one of Mr Wang's site managers, surveying a stretch of the first canal now under construction.
Carved out of farmland, the V-shaped canal is 40 metres wide at ground level and 12 metres at its base. It is nine metres deep and paved with concrete to transform it into a kind of water super-highway.
The sheer scale of the canal's construction, even this one small slice of it, gives the site an epic feel, with the manpower to match. A special section of the canal is being built to sweep under the Yellow river like a highway underpass as it makes its way north to Beijing.
Mr Zhou gestures towards the nearby Yellow river to underline the problems with local water supplies. In recent years the river has run dry well before it has reached the sea.
With that river, he says, "you get one bowl of water, and half a bowl of sand."
China is not only short of water but also has one of the lowest per capita supply rates in the world. Some 400 of the country's 668 large cities suffer from shortages.
But China also wastes what resources it does have. "China uses anywhere between seven and 20 times more water per unit of GDP than developed countries," says Michael Komesaroff, of Urandaline Investments, an Australia-based infrastructure consultancy.
Critics of the south-north water project say it will be useless unless such consumption patterns are radically changed, both by households and industry.
"This project is getting in the way of China's efforts to transform its development model and establish a society that makes economic use of water," said Xue Ye of Friends of Nature, a Beijing-based environmental group.
"Otherwise, the problem will remain no matter how much water is diverted. It is like drinking poisonous wine to wet our throats."
Consumption is increasing rapidly as industry develops and wealthy households demand the the privileges of a middle-class lifestyle - washing machines and dishwashers.
Beijing, in the dusty, dry north, has particularly acute problems. Two-thirds of the city's supply is now provided by groundwater. But the groundwater level is sinking at the rate of about two to three centimetres a year.
China did not start charging for water until 1985, says Mr Komesaroff, and only introduced significant price increases from about 2004. Prices in Beijing will almost double between 2004 and 2006, but few in the city are aware of the need to save water.
Mr Wang, in Jinan, says consumers and factories that use water above their quotas can expect tariff increases for the extra amounts used. These could be as much as 400 per cent.
"We are trying to indoctrinate on this issue . . . into every level of society," he says.
But it is difficult, both politically and administratively, to make the many millions of low-income farmers pay a commercial price for water. The section of the Yellow river near the canal has scores of pipes running off it, placed there without permission by local farmers to irrigate their small plots of land.
Since the aim of the south-north water project is to get fresh drinking water to northern cities and make them pay a price for it, farmers are unlikely to see any benefit.
The price alone will deter them from trying to siphon off water from the more sternly regulated canal. Says Mr Zhou: "Ordinary people will not be able to take water from here."
“南水北调”能否解决中国城市缺水
当王安德在济南长大时，这座省会城市还以“泉城”著称。这里水很多，泉水汩汩地涌到地面，形成水池，炎热的夏季孩子们可以在里面嬉戏。
四十年后，泉水消失了，由于工业和居民用水剧增，导致泉水干涸。如今，该城市处于中国南北部干旱地带的交叉点上。
“目前水越来越少，而且水质也越来越差，”王先生说，他是山东省济南市水力局的一名高级官员。从地理位置上讲，济南位于上海和北京中间。
但离济南不远之处，正在开始一项备受争议的工程，这项工程旨在解决逐渐减少的水资源供应问题，不仅仅包括王先生的家乡济南，更重要的是，解决北方主要城市如北京和天津的供水问题。
在这个上马了诸多大型工程的国家里，“南水北调”是其中最宏大的工程。该工程计划投资600亿美元，至少需要30年来完成，打算修建三个大型输水管道，其中两个至少长达1000公里，从水量充裕的长江及其支流向干旱的北方调水。“这是一个解决棘手问题的革命性方案，”周立铭（音译）说，他是王先生的工地负责人之一，目前负责勘测在建的第一个输水管道的一部分。
该“V”字型输水管道从农田开拓出来，地面部分宽40米，底部宽12米，深9米，由混凝土铺设，使其成为一种水流高速公路。
输水管道建设规模惊人，即使是这段很小的一部分，现场也颇为壮观，使用人力也非常多。目前正在建设的输水管道是一段特殊部分，它从黄河下面穿过，一路向北延至北京，就像高速公路的地下通道。
周先生指向邻近的黄河，强调当地供水面临的问题。近几年来，在入海之前，黄河水就已经干涸了。
对于这条河，他说，“从河里舀一碗水，其中半碗都是沙子。”
中国不仅缺水，而且也是全球人均水资源占有率最低的国家之一。其668座大城市中，约400座存在缺水问题。
然而，中国也在浪费其水资源。“与发达国家相比，中国每单位国内生产总值(GDP)的耗水率是他们的7至20倍。” Urandaline投资有限公司(Urandaline Investments)的迈克尔?科米萨拉夫(Michael Komesaroff)说。Urandaline投资有限公司是澳大利亚一家基础设施咨询公司。
南水北调工程的评论家认为，除非居民及工业从根本上改变这样的水资源消费模式，否则这项工程毫无意义。
北京环保社团“自然之友”(Friends of Nature)总干事薛野认为：“此项工程妨碍了中国转变其发展模式，建立一个节水型社会所做的努力。”
“无论引调多少水，这个问题仍会存在。这好像是在饮鸩止渴。”
随着工业发展，富裕家庭希望享有中产阶级的生活方式而使用洗衣机和洗碗机，水资源消费量正在迅速增长。
多尘、干燥的北京存在着尤为严重的问题。目前，地下水供应占全市供水总量的2/3。但其地下水位正以每年2到3厘米左右的速度沉降。
科米萨拉夫先生表示，中国直到 1985 年才开始收取水费，大约从2004年才对水价进行了大幅上调。在北京，2006年的水价将达到2004年水价的两倍左右，但几乎没有市民认识到节水的必要性。
济南的王先生指出， 用水超出定额的用户和工厂有望要为超额部分支付加价费用，这部分可能高达一般水价的4倍。
“我们正设法把这一节水观念……灌输到社会的各个阶层。”他表示。
然而，要使众多低收入农民按照市场价交纳水费，在政策上和管理上都很难实施。输水管道附近的黄河河段上有很多管子引水，这是当地农民擅自安装这些水管，用来灌溉他们的小块田地。
既然南水北调工程的目的是给北方城市提供干净的饮用水，并让这些城市为此付费，因此，农民不太可能得到任何好处。
单就价格而言，就将阻止他们从管制更加严格的输水管道抽水。周先生表示：“普通人将不能从这里取水。”
