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From: ReutersENN News
Published January 23, 2008 08:21 AM
http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/29488
By Chris Buckley
BAODING, China (Reuters) - Dusty villages far from China's capital are paying their own price for the government's plan to stage a postcard-perfect Olympic Games, enduring shrunken crops, drained wells and contention over lost land and homes.
China is rushing to finish canals to pump 300 million cubic meters of "emergency" water to Beijing for its "green" Games, ensuring a lush, sparkling host city greets the world in August.
The 309 km of channels and pipes cut into Hebei province, next to the capital, will take water from farming country already beset by drought and environmental strains.
Villagers watching a frantic "100-day battle" to complete the main canal by a late-April deadline wondered how much of the price of a leafy Beijing they should bear.
"For the country, it's a good thing. It will bring water to Beijing so everything runs smoothly," said Shi Yinzhu, herding sheep near the 100-metre wide canal in Tang county.
"But for us here, they had to pump away underground water to dig the canal and we've lost a lot of land too ... Sometimes you wonder if they need all the water more than us here."
China is determined to make 2008 a live-to-air affirmation of its economic miracle. But Beijing's plan to draw water from its parched neighbor also dramatizes the environmental blowback from the country's explosive, city-skewed growth.
"There have been many basic problems with the geology and local circumstances that just weren't anticipated," Dai Qing, a Beijing environmental activist long critical of government policy, said of the Olympics water project.
"But the fundamental one is they don't have enough water in northern China to begin with. Why should they pay such a heavy price for Beijing?"