中国南水北调工程正式通水入北京

￡48bn scheme may provide relief to the parched north, but at what cost to the drought-ridden south and its displaced farmers?

这项耗资480亿磅的工程或许可以减缓炎旱的北方的用水危机，但是被干旱困扰的南方地区以及那里的农民又为此付出了多少代价呢？

On Friday afternoon, China quietly inaugurated one of the biggest engineeringprojects of all time: the South-North Water Diversion, a ￡48bn, 2,400km networkof canals and tunnels, designed to divert 44.8bn cubic metres of water annually from China's humid south to its parched, industrialised north.

在周五下午，中国悄然为一直以来最为重要的工程项目：南水北调揭幕。这项工程是一个耗资480亿英镑，全长2400公里的由运河与隧道组成的巨型网络，旨在从湿润的中国南方向炎热的、工业化的北方每年转移448亿立方米的水。

At 2.32pm, the project's "middle line" officially began carrying water from the Danjiangkou reservoir in central China's Hubei province to Beijing – the distance from Corsica to London. The project, officials say, will save China from a water crisis that could set its development back years.

在下午2:32，南水北调的中线工程正式通水：从中国湖北省的丹江口水库引水至北京－－这相当于从Corcica到伦敦的距离。官方认为中国的用水危机会让它的发展倒退许多年，而这项工程就将解决这个危机。

It has also destroyed Wang Yanhe's life. Wang was born near the Danjiangkou reservoirin 1979, married young and had two children – the family lived between a smallstream and a leafy hillside, and grew a variety of grains. In 2009, seven years after the project was approved, officials informed him that the reservoir's water levels were rising and that his village would be submerged. About 345,000villagers have been displaced by the project to date, and Wang soon became oneof them. The government gave him a home in the Heba New Migrant Village by adusty highway in rural Pingdingshan, a coal-rich municipality in neighbouring Henan province whose name translates to "flat mountain".

但这毁了Wang Yanhe的生活。Wang在1979年出生在丹江口水库附近，年纪轻轻结了婚并有了两个小孩——一家人在青山绿水之中生活，并种植有许多庄稼。在2009年，也就是在南水北调工程被批准七年后，官员告知他丹江口水库的水位正在上升，他所生活的村庄会被淹没。到目前为止，已经有大约345，000名村民由于这项工程被重新安置，wang很快也成为他们中的一员。政府给了他位于heba移居新村的一处住处，它位于平顶山郊区里一条尘土飞扬的高速公路旁。平顶山是一座煤矿资源丰富的城市，位于邻近的河南省内，它字面上的意思是“平的山”。

Then came the drought. This summer was Pingdingshan's driest in 63 years – Wang'scorn crop only grew to knee-height, forcing him to abandon his harvest."Nothing is as good as before," he said, chain-smoking cigarettes in his concrete-floored living room. His roof leaks; he can't speak the local cials promised him 0.2 acres of land, but only gave him 0.15. "After we arrived, we realised that the land was all dry," he said. “So it doesn't evenmatter what they promised us.”

这之后他便遭遇了干旱。这个夏天是平顶山63年来最为干旱的一年，wang种植的玉米只长到膝盖那么高，这让他无法收获丰收。“没有一样东西是比以前好的”，他在铺着水泥地板的新起居室里不停地抽着烟说道。他的屋顶漏雨，他也无法说当地的方言。官员允诺会给他0.2英亩的土地，但是实际上只兑现了0.15英亩。“在我们到了那以后，我们才发现那里的土地全是干旱的”他说道“他们说要给我们土地说了等于没说”

The Henan Daily newspaper announced the line's inauguration in a pithy microblog post on Friday. “Being a peoples' engineering project, in keeping with a frugal and pragmatic working style, celebratory activities will be kept as simple aspossible,” it said. "No officials will take part in the ceremonies."

河南日报周五在一则简短的微博中对南水北调中线工程通水这一事件进行了的报导：“作为一项民生工程，将继续贯彻节俭务实作风，通水庆祝活动也将尽量简化，各级领导将不参加仪式”

China's booming economy over the past three decades, coupled with a long-held mandateto "grow first, clean up later", has been cataclysmic for the country's once-bountiful lakes, rivers and aquifers. Morethan half of China's 50,000 rivers have vanished over the past two decades, according to China's first national census of water,published last year. About 70% of its remaining fresh water is polluted. "If wecontinue with our business-as-usual model, China will basically run out ofwater," said Feng Hu, a water analyst with the Hong Kong-based research group China Water Risk. "Itwon't have enough water to power its economy."

中国过去45年的飞速发展一直秉承着长期以来“先发展后治理”的原则，这对曾经美丽的山川河流都造成了灾难性的破坏。根据去年发表的首份中国水资源普查公报显示，已有超过半数的河流在过去30年间干涸，大致70%的淡水被污染。“如果我们继续我们之前的发展模式，中国的水资源将会耗尽”一位来自香港研究小组“chinawater risk”的水资源分析师，feng hu说道，“短缺的水资源将无法推进国家的经济发展”

The project has roots in an off hand comment by Mao Zedong who, onan inspection tour in the early 1950s, said: "The south has plenty of water,but the north is dry. If we could borrow some, that would be good." Theproject has three sections: a1,150km eastern line, which runs from the lower Yangtze River to Tianjin; the middle line, from Danjiangkou to Beijing; and a western line, which could someday link the headwaters of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers across the high-altitude Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. The eastern line began delivering waterto coastal Shandong province last winter. The western line remains largely conceptual, so grand in scale that it may ultimately prove impossible to build.

这项工程的启动源自毛泽东在50年代前期考察时临时发表地一次评论，他说：“南方有着充裕地水资源但是北方却很干旱。倘若我们能从南方借点水到北方，那就太好了。”这项工程分为三个部分：一条长达1150km，从扬子江至天津的东部线；从丹江口到北京的中部线；还有在将来某天能将扬子江与黄河的源头穿越青藏高原连接起来的西部线。东部线在去年冬天已经开始向山东省沿海地区输送水资源，而西部线还大大地停留在概念阶段，过于庞大的设计规模或许会让它最终无法被建造完成。

While the project could provide somemuch-needed relief, it "will never solve north China's water problem", said Jennifer Turner, director of the China Environment Forum at the Wilson Centerin Washington DC. She called the project a "Band-Aid" rather than a long-termsolution. "The challenge in the water sector, writ large, is that it is so hooked into supply-side management," she said. "It's like the engineers in China have a special tattoo that says 'nothing is too big' – they'll move watermassive distances rather than get deep and dirty into the mess of pushing effective water conservation."

“尽管这项工程能提供一些非常有用的帮助，但是它将永远也无法真正解决中国北部的水资源问题”中国环境论坛的主任Jenniferturner在华盛顿特区的wilson中心如此说道。她将这项工程称之为“创可贴式的补救”，并不能成为长远的解决方案。“水务部门的挑战很明显是在于其与供应方管理之间的联系过于密切”她说道，“这就像是中国的工程师在身上纹了一个写着‘没有什么大事是无法完成的'的特殊纹身，他们要跨越极长的距离去运输水，却不愿意去深入到像建造有效的水资源保护区这样的麻烦事中。”

In February,Qiu Baoxing, vice-minister of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, called the project unsustainable. "As thescale of the project gets bigger and the distance gets longer, it is more andmore difficult to divert water," he wrote. "Recycled water could replace diverted water. Most Chinese cities are capable of finding more water if we develop water desalination technology and collect more rain water."

二月，住房与城乡建设部副部长qiu boxing称这项工程是不可行的。“随着这项工程的规模变得越来越大，输水距离越来越长，传送水资源也变得越来越困难。”他写道，“再循环水能替代传输水，倘若我们能发展水脱盐技术并且同时收集利用更多的雨水，大部分的中国城市都能够因此得到更多的水资源。

Experts saythe south may no longer have enough water to spare. They say the project could decimate the Han River, an important tributary of the Yangtze – about 40% ofthe river's water will eventually be diverted north, despite acute water shortages that already plague the cities along its banks. In 2011, five months of drought in Hubei province left 315,000 people short of drinking water. The Danjiangkou reservoir dropped to four metres below "dead water" level,rendering it unusable. Speculation that the South-North Water Diversion project caused this year's drought grew so heated that state media issued a denial. "Henan province is the recipient of benefits from the (project)," Yang Biantong, aspokesman for Henan's flood control and drought relief department, told thePeople's Daily in late August. "Not only has it not had a negative effect, the (project) has also been extremely helpful."

专家指出南方地区或将不再拥有足够的水资源。他们认为该项目会使汉水，一条扬子江的主要支流的储水量大幅减少——大约40%的降水将会被最终调往北方。而在此之前，严重的水资源短缺已经席卷了这条河流两岸的城市。在2011年，时长五个月的湖北旱灾造成315，000人缺少饮用水。丹江口水库的水位线掉落到“死水”线四米以下，这让它不能被使用。关于南水北调工程引起旱灾的猜测日益高涨，甚至引起官媒出面否认。“河南省是这项工程的受益者”，河南洪水控制与干旱救灾部发言人yangbiantong在八月份对人民日报的记者说道，“这项工程不仅不会带来任何危害，它还相当的有益。”

Christine Boyle, founder of Blue Horizon In sight and an expert on China's water issues, said the issue boils down to how one defines a addition to crippling weather droughts – periods of little rainfall – China is also suffering from economic droughts, which occur when the demand for wateroutstrips supply. "You can't say the South-North Water Diversion is causing a weather drought," she said. "But you can say it's intensifying an economic drought." Many Chinese farmers are already economically squeezed, andincreasingly erratic weather patterns, perhaps related to climate change –freezing winters, blistering summers, floods and droughts – are now pushing them into a state of emergency.

Christineboyle是bluehorizon insight 的创始人，也是中国水资源问题的一名专家，他认为这个问题可以归结到如何去定义干旱。中国在经历严重的自然旱灾的同时，也在经受着经济上的干旱，而这发生在水资源供不应求的情况下。“你不能说南水北调造成了自然干旱”，她说，“但是你可以说它加剧了经济干旱”。许多中国农民已经在经济上受到挤压，而目前越来越阴晴不定的天气（这或许与气候变化有关）－极寒的冬天，灼热的夏天，洪水与干旱－正在把他们逼向紧迫的境地。

The South-North Water Diversion project began sending emergency water supplies to Pingdingshan in mid-August and, according to the official newswire Xinhua, the diversion was asuccess. The middle line delivered more than 50m cubic metres of water to the city's Baiguishan reservoir over a month and a half, it said, "effectively relieving the scarce water supply of Pingdingshan city's one million-plus residents".

根据新华网的报导，南水被调工程在八月中旬已开始向平顶山成功运输紧急供水。中部线在一个半月内向平顶山市的baiguishan水库运输水资源超过5000万立方米，新华网写道：“其有效缓解了平顶山市一百多万居民的水资源匮乏问题”。

While that water has flowed into the taps of Pingdingshan's urbanites and the cooling systems of its coal-firedpower plants, farmers on the city outskirts have been left to fend for themselves. Chang Xiangdang, 40, lives with his family of six in Malou Village, population 1,000, a dense cluster of cinder block houses only a few hundred metres from the project's main channel. From his small patch of radish and cabbage, high concrete embankments stretch to the horizon and an arch-likesluice rises like a mirage. "The channel runs through our town, but there's noway to get the water, no gap in the wall," he said. Villagers rely on groundwater for bathing and cooking. In previous years, they could dig 20 metres to reach the aquifer. This year, even 80-metre wells are running dry.

尽管水被运送到平顶山市居民的水龙头中，煤矿发电厂的冷却系统中，在这座城市郊区的农民们却没有从中受益，他们只能靠自己想办法。Changxiangdang，40岁，一家六口人住在malou村。这个人口1000的村落密集着用煤渣砌成的房屋，距离运输主干道不过几百米。在chang的一小块种植着萝卜和白菜的菜地边，高耸的混泥土堤坝向地平线与拱状水闸门延伸，就像一幅幻影。“这个水道穿越过我们镇，但是我们不能去取水，因为墙面没有任何缝隙。”他说。村民依靠地下水来洗漱，烧菜。 在前几年，他们挖20米深就能找到蓄水层，但是今年挖了80米深的水井也要干了。

Chang said the lack of water has thrown his life into flux. Like Wang, the displaced farmer, he has given up on this year's corn harvest. His family has been subsisting on a compensation package that project officials gave him four years ago, when they requisitioned much ofhis farmland. Another dry summer, he says, would leave him destitute. He has considered taking a construction job in the city. "There's no more water here," he said. "I'll do what it takes to survive."

Chang说水资源的短缺已经将他的生活扰乱。像wang一样，这位因南水北调工程而搬迁的农民放弃了今年的收成。他的家庭已经在靠四年前负责该项目的官员征用他的农田时给予他的赔偿金度日。他说下一个夏天如果还是干旱的他将穷困潦倒。他已经在考虑去城市找一份建筑工的工作。他说：“这里没有更多的水了，我得另寻生路。”