Editorials

The urgency to save water

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-29 07:52

The most severe drought in more than a century ravaging Southwest provinces should serve as a reminder to other parts of the country that they need to get prepared to avert the dangers from the water crisis, with more than 400 cities in need of water.

Beijing is a case in point. With per capita water resources of only 180 cubic meters, scarcity of water has been a permanent scourge. And what the city has done in saving on water is far from enough.

A total of 220,000 tons of fresh water are wasted in flushing toilets every day. The amount of water leaking in a year from the old water supply pipelines is estimated to be about 70 Kunming Lakes at the Summer Palace. The 9,000 car-washing shops consume as much as 30 million cubic meters of water a year.

In addition, the 38 golf courses around the city use 20 million cubic meters of water a year. And at least more than a million tons of water are needed to make artificial snow for the ski runs in the city's suburbs. The amount of water consumed by the more than 1,000 bathhouses is estimated at nearly 20 million tons.

This situation is similar in other cities badly in need of water. There is much we can to do to save water. Of the 100 residential communities that have pipelines for treated water in Beijing, only 20 percent are using it to flush toilets. Why do we need so many golf courses to waste the precious fresh water? Why do we allow car-washing stops to waste fresh water rather than treated water to wash cars? Why does the government allow so many bathhouses and ski runs to operate?

All these businesses are making money at the expense of our precious resource of fresh water. We can't afford to wait until it is too late. Do whatever we can to save water.

(China Daily 03/29/2010 page8)