VP urges drinking water safety in drought season

BEIJING—Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu said the top priority of the current fight against the lingering drought should be maintaining drinking water safety.
The vice premier, also head of Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters (SFDH), on Saturday urged more efforts to prepare for the prolonged drought which was expected to last until next spring. The SFDH has issued an urgent circular to concerned departments, requiring them to intensify water conservancy development, take measures to ensure drinking water safety and maintain agricultural water supply for the winter and coming spring.
It has sent four groups of experts to supervise drought-fighting work in provincial regions including Jiangxi, Hunan, Hubei, Guangdong, Guangxi and Guizhou. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance, along with the SFDH, would allocate “a huge amount of funds” to finance efforts to combat the drought.
In a view to protecting water security in the Pearl River Delta, the SFDH also required local headquarters along the Pearl River to collect data on real-time stream flow in the river and keep a close watch on salt tides starting from December. Since October, scant rainfall and warm weather have caused severe droughts in China’s southern regions, affecting more than 1million hectares of farmland and resulting in a shortage of water supply in some areas.
From October to November, the Pearl River saw the minimum rainfall in five decades. Governments of drought-hit regions have taken diversified measures to maintain water supply. “Tap water at my home has stopped flowing for one month and I have to fetch water from my neighbor on the first floor every evening,” said Wei Weiguo, a resident in Dongxiang county of east China’s Jiangxi Province. Wei lives on the fourth floor of a residential building of the county seat, where water has become a top concern for 100,000 local residents due to a severe drought plaguing the area.
Residents in Dongxiang are supplied with water only between 7 a.m. to 8 a.m., 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. every day. Those who live on the fourth floor or higher have had to use buckets to fetch water from the first floor for more than 30 days. One of the only two reservoirs on which the county residents rely has stopped supplying water. One water factory for the countryseat has stopped operation.
“The Foling reservoir has only 400,000 cubic meters of water left, less than one tenth of its normal storage volume,” said Li Xiangrong, deputy general manger of Dongxiang County Tap Water Company. “The water quality also becomes so bad that it is no longer usable.” The other one, Xingfu reservoir, now has 3.8 million cubic meters of water for use, only 15 percent of its normal storage.
“The water level of Xingfu reservoir is currently three meters below the water-taking pipes,” said Li. “We must use pumps to get water from it.” Navigation was almost at a standstill in all lakes and rivers inside Jiangxi, the provincial navigation bureau said.
The water surface of Poyang Lake in Jiangxi, the country’s largest freshwater lake, has shrunk to less than 50 square km from3,000 square km in flood season, the Jiangxi Hydrological Bureau said. The lake’s water level at the Xingzi hydrological station was 7.5 meters on Friday, close to the historic low of 7.11 meters.
Across Jiangxi, about 300,000 urban residents and 100,000 rural people are facing severe water shortages, according to the provincial Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters. Water for industrial use in Dongxiang and Le’an counties has almost been cut off to ensure domestic use for residents, local governments said.
Drinking water shortage is also affecting about 83,000 people and 40,000 heads of livestock in neighboring Hunan Province.
In the past 80 days since mid-September, the province only had an average rainfall of 49.3 mm and in some counties it was even less than 10 mm, according to the Hunan provincial flood control and drought relief headquarters.