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China’s Water Supply Problems

An October 2003 report from Embassy Beijing.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency are working with Chinese authorities and NGO’s to protect scarce water resources along North China’s Hai River.

North China Rivers are Heavily Used, Highly Degraded

North China is home to roughly 43 percent of China’s population but has only 14 percent of China’s water resources. China’s annual per capita water resources of 2,292 cubic meters are one of the lowest levels in the world, only slightly above that of India. North China’s per capita water resources, at 750 cubic meters per year, are a fraction of China’s already low figure. Several of North China’s major rivers, including the Yellow River, the Hai River, the Liao River, the Huai River and the Wei River are heavily polluted and over-allocated. Renewable water resources for the 3-H rivers (Huang “Yellow”, Hai, Huai) are all well below 1000 cubic meters per year, the international standard for water scarcity. A 2001 World Bank study called the 3-H rivers the “most degraded” rivers in China. More than 50 percent of the length of the major rivers in North China has Level V or worse water quality (poor). As a result of water releases from upstream reservoirs on the Yellow River to meet downstream demands, some of those reservoirs are now at 50-year lows.

China Adopts Multi-Pronged Policy on Water

China has adopted a multi-pronged strategy to manage water issues in North China. That strategy includes preventing water pollution, reducing water pollution, implementing rational prices for water, reducing consumption, promoting re-use of water, building up wastewater treatment infrastructure, charging rational prices for wastewater treatment, and building the $20 billion-plus South-North Water Transfer Project. China’s water prices, particularly for irrigation water, are well below world averages, according to a January 2003 article in WaterWorld magazine. China’s Ministry of Water Resources (MWR) is working with the World Bank on institutional reform in irrigation called a Water Users Association (WUA) that lets groups of farmers make their own decisions about deliveries and prices of irrigation water, and thus promote more rational use of water.

U.S.-China Cooperation on Integrated Strategy

China has strong needs with respect to water, it has the desire to address those needs, it has the technical capacity to solve parts of the problem, and it welcomes assistance on integrating and implementing its policies. The Hai River and the city of Tianjin in northern China are the focus of a U.S-China cooperative project on integrated water resource management.

The Hai River is the major waterway for Tianjin, a city of 4 million people. The Hai River passes through Beijing on its way to Tianjin, and thus has a high visibility with Chinese leaders. Many water projects in other watersheds get bogged down because the basins are too large and the problems are too complex to show results. The Hai River has a lot to recommend it as the site for a small but focused project. Results on the Hai will be more easily attained and more easily leveraged into other areas than would results in other watersheds. A project on the Hai could even become a model for the Green Olympics.

EPA and USDA Already Working in Hai River

U.S. EPA, in conjunction with USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service, has just launched a three-year project in the Hai River Basin called “Clean Water for Sustainable Cities.” This project focuses on improving drinking water quality, reducing industrial water pollution, reducing industrial water consumption, increasing mechanisms for financing water-related infrastructure, and promoting development of a watershed management plan. Enhancing the performance of drinking water plants and wastewater treatment plants is a major part of EPA’s technical plan for the Hai River Basin. EPA has noted problems there including encroachment by agriculture, a lack of wastewater treatment of household waste, and discharges from hotels, restaurants and light manufacturing.

A related EPA project entitled “Real Time Watershed Management” has a real-time water quality monitoring system in the Yellow River near Zhengzhou, Henan, and a demonstration project on membrane technology to treat industrial waste as a brewery in Jinan, Shandong. The lessons from these two demonstration projects will be transferred to the Hai River watershed project.

EPA Project Relies on U.S. and Chinese NGO’s

EPA’s Hai River Project is being implemented through a cooperative agreement with the Civil Engineering Research Foundation (CERF). EPA’s technical lead is a water specialist from the Water Division in EPA’s Region 9 (West Coast.) Part of EPA’s strategy for long-term environmental protection is to involve local NGO’s in this project to strengthen their capacity and build links between the NGO’s and the Chinese Government.

USDA’s component of this project is to transfer lessons learned from a joint State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) – USDA project in the Yellow River on water quantity and water quality. A major aspect of that project was to develop real-time water quality monitoring capability at SEPA.