One of Gansu Party Secretary Lu Hao's main priorities is to help millions of
residents of his province gain access to safe drinking water.
"As one of the poorest and driest areas in China, having
drinking water for each person is a matter of social welfare that
comes even before food," Lu told the China Central Television in an
interview on Wednesday.
Droughts and dry spells are common in this mountainous,
semi-arid province with a population of more than 27 million.
The people depend primarily on rain-fed substance
agriculture.?
"In central Gansu, areas like Huining County get less than 300
millimeters of rain a year," Lu said. "There is no surface or
ground water on the plateau. People have to carry water from deep
gullies."
Zhao Rui, a Huining native and a student at university in
Beijing, said even washing one's feet was a luxury in his town.
"I told my classmates that people in my town take only three
baths in their lives: after birth, before getting married and after
they die," Zhao said.
"They don't believe me. They said, 'you are so humorous'."
Totally dependant on the rain, locals in mountainous areas have
been harvesting rainfall since the 1980s.
Then in the 1990s the Gansu provincial government initiated a
"1-2-1" rainwater harvesting project, under which the government
and donors provide 1,000 yuan (US$120) worth of cement and steel to
individual households, allowing them to build one collection field
and two underground tanks and to irrigate one piece of land with
rainwater. The goal is to develop a "courtyard economy".
The project has spread throughout the province's mountainous
areas, providing water for both household and crop use.
"Such projects benefited two million people by the end of last
year," Lu said.
However, the 1-2-1 project is not so applicable in areas with
less rainfall.
"We have other solutions: one is to introduce and pump nearby
water resources up to villages in the surrounding mountains and
plateaus," the official said.
Another method is to excavate deep wells and treat ground water
to make it potable.
These methods could provide 210,000 people with drinking water
and irrigation.
Moreover, the official said, the ongoing project to divert water
from the Taohe River, a tributary of the Yellow River, will benefit
three million people after it is completed within the next five
years.
Between 2000 and 2004 the State has brought drinking water to
more than 4.85 million people in Gansu, costing about US$150
million.
(China Daily March 9, 2007)