Wells banned to ease city’s water crisis

Beijing plans to increase control over extraction of groundwater by banning wells drilled by individuals or organizations for their own use within the Fifth Ring Road.

The move will come three to five years after the South-to-North Water Diversion Project is scheduled to reach Beijing in 2014, the Global Times confirmed with the local water authority yesterday.

There are more than 10,000 drilled wells pumping groundwater at some government agencies, schools and residential communities in Beijing.

"The water quality in those wells is deteriorating and the water output is decreasing year by year. So after the Yangtze River water arrives in Beijing, we will stop using nearly 800 wells," said Yu Yaping, director of the publicity department of Beijing Water Authority.

How many wells will be replaced annually depends on the South-to-North project discharge, he said.

"Some wells in the suburbs with good water quality will still operate," Yu said.

Nearly two-thirds of the city's drinking water comes from groundwater. The available per capita water has dropped to 100 cubic meters, much lower than the internationally acknowledged warning line of 1,000 cubic meters per capita, according to the Beijing Water Authority.

Beijing consumed 3.6 billion cubic meters of water last year, 2 billion of which was groundwater, the Beijing Times reported. The city has extracted 5.6 billion cubic meters of water over the accepted level in the last 10 years.

"Over-extraction of groundwater results in subsidence and destruction of our ecological environment," said Mu Jianxin, a senior engineer with the department of irrigation and drainage at the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research.

The water table dropped by 12 meters from 1999 to 2010, meaning that 2,650 square kilometers of land has subsided.

The land is sinking at a maximum rate of 137 millimeters a year in economic and cultural boom areas such as Haidian and Chaoyang districts, China.org.cn reported earlier.

Beijing plans to adopt the method of artificial groundwater recharge with water from the Yangtze River after 2014, the Beijing Times said, but Yu denied that such a plan existed, saying the city is controlling the amount of underground water exploited each year.

Despite Yu's denial, experts claim this method is standard practice to balance the exploitation of resources.

"It's standard international practice. It seems the best way to reach the balance of the ground water," Mu said.

But the high cost of the recharge project will be a problem affecting the government's decision.

"And the water amount from the South-North project might not be so stable. We must ensure the drinking water supply to residents first," Mu noted.