In what I belive is one of the first steps in teh right direction to relieving the pressure of China’s water table, reservoirs, and Hebei province itself, officials in Beijing are now looking to increase the price of water.
According to the China.org report Beijing looks to dampen demand for scarce water, the primary catalyst is a delay in the south to north diversion project (a project readers know I am skeptical of):
“The current prices are not sustainable for a water-scarce city like Beijing,” said Professor Wang Dangxian, a researcher with the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research.
As a short-term fix, Beijing brought in around 225 million tons of clean water from Hebei province before the Beijing Olympic Games last year.
what I have yet to fully come to understand is why, in the face of overwhelming evidence, it has taken this long to take this measure. That the relationship between Beijing’s lack of water and its pricing (20% that of world average) was either never made or never addressed (ranks right up there with believing that sucking up 1 billion liters of water from the Yangtze is considered a sustainable plan).
Going forward, I would expect that were the ne pricing plan to be passed, it would go beyond the car-washes and saunas mentioned in the article (yes, those were the ONLY two industries mentioned), and one would hope that it would make its way into the agricultural sector as that is where China is losing the majority of its water.