Living Lab: Yellow River
The mean runoff is 58 billion m3. With the development of economy and society, water consumption will increase constantly. Water consumption in life and production rises from 12 billion m3 in the 1950s to 30.7 billion m3 now (other regions out of the basin consume 10.6 billion m3). This causes a serious problem of zero-flow in the lower stream. In the past 27 years from 1972 to 1998, zero-flow occurred in 21years with a total duration of 1051 days. Every year from 1990 to 1998, zero-flow occurred and the lasted time was longer and longer, so was the length of the river reach. In 1997, the situation was the most serious. Lijin cross-section, nearest to the estuary had zero-flow for 226 days in a year, the zero-flow section extended upward even to Kaifeng City in Henan Province. Frequent zero-flow and less water flowing into the sea cause the aggravation of the contradiction between supply and demand and the deterioration of ecological environment and water-pollution. These extremely threaten swamps in the estuary and the ecological diversity, increase the channel deposit, weaken the discharge capacity and burden the flood-control.
After the unified dispatch of water in the trunk in 1999, zero-flow has been lessened. But, because of water shortage in this zone and the weak supervision system in the basin, an authoritative, effective and harmonious supervision system has not been formed, and the management is still weak. There are neither essential laws or policies nor economic means for unified regulation. So water shortage and zero-flow can not be settled thoroughly.
(2) With the development of economy and society, the gap between supply and demand of water is even more serious.
It is estimated that in 2010, considering water saving, the total water consumption in the basin and the neighboring areas will increase to 52 billion m3. Considering sand transport in the down stream in flood season and the minimum ecological flow in other seasons, the Yellow River Basin can provide a maximum water volume of 48 billion m3 in normal years (including 11 billion m3 ground water), with a gap of 4 billion m3. In moderately dry year, water shortage will reach 10 billion m3. Water shortage has been a basic restricting factor of the sustainable development of economy and society in the Yellow River Basin and the pertinent areas.
The loss of water and soil and the deterioration of water environment not yet controlled effectively.
(1) Water and soil losses have not been controlled effectively.
There are some conspicuous problems in the harnessing of water and soil losses:
Firstly, for a long time, the investment is extremely deficient with slow progress of harnessing. The existing standards are fairly low without corollary equipment, and the survival rate of trees and grass is very low.
Secondly, the harnessing in some areas which have more sand and coarse sand, is extremely lagging and the gully works and dam works are few. The Loess Plateau is a chief sand-production area covering 7.86 thousand square kilometer, where the economy is very backward and the ecology is weak. Due to the lack of gully and dam works, the measures of intercepting and reducing sand are not so effective.
Thirdly, the prevention, supervision and management are not effective. In some areas, the phenomenon of harnessing and destroying at the same time is very common. During the mining of coal and nonferrous metal in the bordering areas of Shanxi, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia, and Henan, Shaanxi and Shanxi, the relationship between economy and ecology has been ignored, which deteriorates the weak ecology itself. The area of forest belt in Ziwu Mountain and Liupan Mountain is decreasing year by year. With the increase of human demands from the nature, new factors leading to water and soil losses arise, and the pressure on ecology is heavier and heavier.
(2) Water pollution is more serious.
The industry in the basin is usually of low investment, high consumption and heavy pollution. There are so many enterprises which consume more water and produce more contaminations. Especially, from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, paper-making, chemical plant, tan and other heavy-pollution factories developed quickly. So the pollution sources and its discharge capacity have greatly increased; at the same time the treatment of pollutant was not sound for the lack of effective supervision. Then plenty of raw effluent that could not reach the standards was drained into the river. In the early 1990s the effluent load reached 4.2 billion m3, which is twice as much as that of the early 1980s. Water quality deteriorated sharply. The Official Gazette of Chinese Environment Condition by the National Environmental Protection Bureau in 1997 showed that, compared with other rivers in China, the polluted length of the Yellow River ranked the second. Compared with the water-quality of 1985, in 2000 the length with the water-quality standards of Ⅳ, Ⅴor inferior to Ⅴ increased by 30.4%. The deterioration of water quality not only does harm to life and health of the people directly, but also aggravates water shortage greatly.
It is estimated that the pollution discharge in the whole basin will exceed 6.5 billion m3 in 2010. At the same time the pollution caused by fertilizer will spread further. If effective measures can not be taken in time, water quality in the trunk stream and tributary nearby the large or middle cities will possibly exceed the water-quality standard of Ⅴ. This will threaten the safety of water supply.
(III) Main cognitions
In the long-time of harnessing and developing of the Yellow River, through the continuous exploration of “practice-cognition-practice again”, the following cognition about the particularity and regularity of the Yellow River is deepened gradually.
1. The Yellow River has less water but more sand and is very difficult to harness. The urgency and importance of the harnessing and developing must be realized. Its protracted nature and complexity must also be completely considered.
2. All factors must be taken into consideration as a unity which can influence and restrain each other. The factors include natural conditions, ecological environment, economy and society. Great emphasis should be put on their correlation for calamity elimination and benefit generation.
3. Considering the correlation of water consumption for ecology, industry and agriculture, water-saving measures must be practiced. To realize the sustainable utilization of water resources, the optimized distribution, conservation and saving must be intensified.
4. Sediment problems are still the key. Equal attention must be paid to sand control and flood control. Water and soil conservation must be looked on as a radical measure to the harnessing.
5. To solve the problems of the Yellow River, both engineering measures and non-engineering measures, particularly the up-to-date techniques must be emphasized.
6. Guided by the theory of socialist market economy, the harnessing and developing of the Yellow River must esteem the laws of nature and economy.
