New concept applied in Yellow River management
( 2003-10-23 21:23) (Xinhua)
China has introduced a new concept, aiming to "harmoniously coexist with
nature", into its management of the Yellow River, China's second longest
river.
"The new concept has been successfully applied in the management and
development of the Yellow River and it may be of profound significance for the
management of other rivers in China and the rest of the world," said Suo
Lisheng, Vice Minister of Water Resources at an on-going international forum on
the Yellow River, held in Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan
Province.
In 1998 several catastrophic floods occurred on China's major
rivers, such as the Yangtze, China's longest river, and Songhua River in
northeast China. Disasters forced the country's water resources department to
re-examine its previous work and shift its guidelines of water resources
management from "mankind must overcome nature" to "harmonious coexistence with
nature", and from "fighting against floods" to "efficiently utilizing
floodwater".
"The Yellow River has an international reputation as a flood-
prone river with too much silt, while some of its sections frequently dry up,"
said Suo Lisheng.
"In a bid to tame the Yellow River nowadays, guaranteeing
water flow from river source to lower reaches tops the agenda."
Since 1991,
the mainstream of the Yellow River had stopped flowing year after year due to
excessive use of water. In 1997, the river even dried up for 226 days, severely
threatening the ecological environment and biological diversity of the lower
reaches.
Since 2000, the Chinese government has implemented a water resources
allocation plan for the Yellow River, which limits water consumption at the
upper and middle reaches in an attempt to guarantee water arrives at its lower
reaches.
Since then, the river has not dried up. However, since the beginning
of this flood season, the river's tributaries have flooded 17 times.
Minister
of Water Resources Wang Shucheng said that in the past, people just let
floodwater flow downstream and finally to the sea during flood season, then the
river suffered flow stoppage during the dry season. Therefore, to store some
floodwater during flood season for use in the dry season is a valuable lesson
drawn from past work.
This flood season, the Xiaolangdi reservoir, located at
the upper reaches of the river, stored a total of seven billion cubic meters of
floodwater for later use.
Meanwhile, floodwater has another important
function, to push silt down to the ocean, according to Suo Lisheng.
This
year, about 120 million tons of silt, which was originally deposited on the
riverbed of the river, has been swept into the sea.
Suo Lisheng noted that it
has been recognized in China that water is an important strategic
resource.
"We should optimize the water allocation through some economic
means", he added.
For example, water wasting was common in irrigated areas in
northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, on the middle reaches of the
Yellow River. Since 2000, the local water resources management department has
increased water prices from 0.0015 yuan to 0.012 yuan per cubic meter. In 2001
alone, about 1.5 billion cubic meters of water was saved.
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