(Ecns.cn)！In August a letter calling for help from Changfang village near the Shennongjia Forest Zone in Hubei Province caught the attention of the media, according to the Southern Weekend.
According to the villagers, a small hydropower station had been diverting a substantial amount of water to the lower reaches of the Changfang River, leaving residents with a severe water shortage for daily use and agricultural irrigation.
Changfang village is not the only one suffering. A string of 90 small hydropower stations have overtaken the four main rivers in the area, with another ten under construction and two more in development. They have drained most of the water away, leaving Shennongjia and the nearby villages high and dry.
Known as a well-preserved ecosystem, the Shennongjia Forest Zone has been hailed for its biodiversity. But that's changing fast as the hydropower stations eat into the local natural environment, leading to dried up riverbeds, the decimation of rare and endangered species and increased poverty among mountain villagers.
Money drives hydropower boom
"Small hydropower stations have even been built on small rivers in the area," said Weng Lida, former director of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SETA), who has kept an eye on the situation in Shennongjia since 1999.
As a protection zone for biodiversity, Shennongjia is home to 350,000 kilowatts of hydropower, among which 310,000 kilowatts have already been exploited. 88 hydropower stations of the current 90 scattered across the forest zone are of the diversion type, which move water from rivers and generate electricity in the nearest uplands.
"So far, 20 of the rivers I visited have dried out in the lower reaches," said Weng.
Theoretically, water should be preserved in an area like Shennongjia, but it is money, not environmental protection, that talks in the poor mountain area, he added.
Earlier in 2000, there were only 29 such projects, and most local revenue came from timber. But attracted to the considerable economic benefits of hydropower and related tax revenue, the local government began investing in low-cost yet high-profit small hydro-power stations, and constructed 61 of them in only a decade.
Hydroelectric tax income has become the greatest source of revenue for the local government, which increased from 21.32 million yuan ($3.37 million) to 25 million yuan in the last three fiscal years, accounting for 15% of total tax revenue. To the local government, it was "too much to resist."
But for local residents along the river, the price of water exploitation has been high.
