Water experts yesterday called for a stop to an ongoing project to cover a riverbed with an impermeable plastic cover to create a man-made lake in Jinan to be scrapped.

Experts worry the plastic will disrupt the natural process of river water seeping into the ground, which they said would threaten the groundwater supply in the city, the capital of East China's Shandong Province.

The project, conducted by the Western Town Headquarters under the municipal government, got under way in January despite much controversy.

It aims to turn a 2.3-kilometre section of the Beisha River into a man-made lake, adding a "scenic spot" to the newly-built university town.

It is now the dry season and construction workers are busy paving the riverbed with plastic membranes. The project is expected to be completed in June, before the rain season comes.

"It is really absurd," Professor Zhang Yanzhong, a senior water expert in Jinan, told China Daily yesterday.

Zhang said the section of the river involved was the most important "seep zone" in the west of Jinan, where river water seeps underground to form groundwater.

Groundwater from the west is a crucial source of drinking water for downtown residents, Zhang added.

"This is going to trigger a series of problems," said Zhang, 73, who has been devoted to environmental protection after retiring from the State Metallurgical Industry bureau.

Zhang is an advocate of utilizing the abundant groundwater in the west to cope with the city's increasing demand for water.

"If we cannot receive enough groundwater supply from the west, we will have two alternatives: to extract more groundwater in the city proper or to pipe water from the Yellow River into the city," Zhang said. "Both are undesirable."

Zhang claimed the former option would threaten the flow of scenic springs in the city including the famous Baotu Spring, while piping water from the Yellow River would result in inferior drinking water.

An official from the city's water resources bureau, who refused to be identified, insisted the man-made lake project would not cause significant problems or damage.

But Shang Guangyu, an expert with Shandong Bureau of Water Resource Exploration, said he could never understand the government's motive in carrying out such a project.

"The project is likely to cause irrecoverable damage to the ecology and environment," Shang said.

With abundant underground water and springs, Jinan is known as the "City of Springs."

(China Daily 04/26/2006 page3)