CCTV.com
July 29, 2014
A drought of record proportions. In Shangnan County, Shaanxi Province, the only local water source — the Xianhe Reservoir — is experiencing a severe water shortage, which left some 60,000 residents in the county struggling to make do.
“We need to reuse the water from washing, cleaning and cooking just to flush the toilets,” local resident Yu Xia said.
The town’s tap water has been suspended for over a month. Instead, each day, the local government sends 30 trucks to fetch water from a river located 20 kilometers away. After treatment, the water is delivered to each home. But with no precipitation expected in the near future, maintaining this routine could become an even more daunting task.
Meanwhile, Pingdingshan City in Henan Province is going through its worst drought in 30 years. Rainfall is down 90 percent from the previous year, making it the driest year since 1975. Twenty-one reservoirs used for agricultural irrigation have dried up. And farmers are becoming desperate to save their crops.
“My wife would rather save water for irrigating the field than take a shower. The corn field is our lifeline,” farmer Zhou Jinfa said.
More than 860,000 hectares of agricultural land in Henan have been affected by the drought. Local authorities have launched an emergency response plan, using some 5,000 motor-pumped wells to irrigate the fields.
In Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, parched grasslands have meant hungry and thirsty livestock.
“In order to make up for the lack of grass, we will buy grass from other parts of the country and make full use of our own agricultural straw. We need to provide 3 million tons of grass for our 6 million livestock animals,” Niu Zhengfu, vice chief of Yili Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang, said.
Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region’s government is also mobilizing funds and personnel to dig wells and build water pipelines to keep the water flowing until the drought is over.
