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The Yellow River is having an unusually good day. So good, in fact, that Yu
Songlin, who has spent most of the past five years monitoring the water from the
headquarters off the Yellow River Conservancy Commission in Zhengzhou, looks
perplexed. Scanning two wall-sized electronic maps showing hydrology stations
and reservoirs along the 5464-kilometre waterway, he reads off real-time data on
quality and quantity. It is far more positive than he expects, given the river's
deserved reputation as an ecological disaster area. From the source high on the
Tibetan Plateau, through Qin-ghai, Gansu and most of Ningxia, the red LED
figures show pollution is at the second lowest level, which means it is -
shockingly - fit to drink with only minimal
treatment. In the industrial blacklands of Inner Mongolia, where the river
makes a dirty great northern U-turn, the reading is a more typical five -
hazardous to touch. But above average volume and flow-speed, flush the middle
reaches along the Shaanxi-Shanxi border down to a moderate three on the scale of
five. The water quality then returns to a healthy two at Lijin near the estuary
in Shandong. "I almost never see
that. It's usually four," says the young hydro-engineer, who cautions against
over-optimism. "The downpour yesterday helped a lot."
Rain is not the only reason why this workhorse waterway is looking slightly
less filthy, weak and sickly than the outside world has come to expect. Since
the shock of 1997, when the Yellow River failed to reach the sea for 226 days,
the government has pumped hundreds of billions of renminbi into China's 'Mother
River'. It has attempted to streamline its administration, tightened legislative
controls, and initiated one of the biggest hydro-engineering projects in history
to share the burden of supporting 140 million people. That this still is not
enough shows the immensity of China's water problems and the limited powers of
the government to implement policies that curtail demand rather than increase
supply.
The Yellow River delta faces four main threats: sediment, flood, drought and
pollution. The mixed success of the government's response to these challenges is
apparent on a three-day, 400-kilometre drive along the middle and lower reaches
in Henan, where the river has historically inflicted its greatest devastation.
The drive starts at the eastern edge of the Loess Plateau, the source of 90
per cent of the annual 1.6 billion tons of sediment that gives the Yellow River
its notoriously fierce and fickle character. Centuries of over-cultivation and
soil erosion have turned vast swathes of Gansu, Inner Mongolia and Shaanxi into
dust bowls. Beijingers feel the consequences every spring when the city is
buffeted by sandstorms. The communities, living along the banks of the Yellow
River are more likely to suffer in the summer, when the combination of sediment
build-up and flood water used to make the river writhe destructively up and down
the delta.
However, one of the most expensive but environmentally effective campaigns of
the past few decades has been `grain for green'. Under this policy, millions of
upper and mid-stream farmers are paid to stop cultivation so the topsoil can
recover. It is a major reason why there has been no major flood on the Yellow
River for two decades, though this is more commonly attributed to the
construction of the huge Xiaolangdi dam in Jiyuan, western Henan. This
1.3-kilometre wide, USD3.5 billion hydroelectric generator has helped to
regulate the flow of silt and water.
Pollution is another problem that is far from solved, although there are
increasing glimmers of hope. The Yellow River is abused and overused. Last year,
China's official Xinhua news agency reported that four billion tons of
industrial waste and sewage are discharged annually into the river system,
leaving 83 per cent of the water too contaminated to drink without treatment. In
2007, the authorities revealed that a third of the 150 fish species that once
swam the murky waters are now extinct and fishermen's catches are down by 60 per
cent because of pollution, falling water levels and over-exploitation of the
river's resources. Tang Xiyang, one of the founders of the green movement in
China, puts the trend in apocalyptic terms: `The Yellow River civilization has
been destroyed. People cannot survive on that river anymore.'
More certainly needs to be done and Song Huiran is doing it his way. "I used
to swim in the ponds around our village, but they have all dried up," says Song
Huiran, who cycles around the region on a one-man conservation campaign. "The
water level in the well has fallen by three meters in the past 10 years. During
the drought earlier this year, many villages in this area had to ask for a
special diversion of water from the Yellow River. Every year we need to take
more water to irrigate our crops." The 71-year-old former teacher believes
diversions are not the solution. He wants people to take more responsibility.
"We all need to save and recycle water. Some villagers think we have plenty of
water, enough to last 200 years. I tell them there are shortages across the
world. We must do more to save water for future generations." |
