The heat wave that has been hanging over southwest China's Sichuan Province and Chongqing Municipality for a month has
inflicted severe drought on this traditionally wet area, through
which numerous rivers flow.
The fact that more than 3 million residents there have
difficulty obtaining enough drinking water again tolls the alarm
bell about the pressing task of building up a water-saving
mechanism and cultivating awareness of water efficiency among all
residents.
Zhai Haohui, vice-minister of water resources, was quoted by the
Beijing News as saying on Monday that more than 100 cities
are suffering from severe water shortages.
Inadequate awareness for water conservation in the economic
development and urbanization process has aggravated the already
prominent water shortages, the vice-minister said. So a mechanism
must be established to make it compulsory for construction planners
and every citizen to take efficient water use into
consideration.
In the city of Zhangye in northwest China's Gansu Province, where water shortage has
become a prominent bottleneck and even affected the biological
environment in a downstream area of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, water
coupons have been used to encourage residents to save on water. The
extra coupons residents have saved can be traded on the market and
the water management unit will buy back un-traded coupons for as
much as 120 percent of the price residents paid for them.
This is a truly good method to cultivate water conservation
awareness among residents.
The vice-minister said there is no doubt the water price will
rise because a reasonable water price should comprise the costs of
providing the running water, tapping the water resources and
treating the sewage.
Citizens ought to pay more money for the water they use. The
more water they use, the more money they pay. So should they for
the cost of treating the wastewater they produce and the cost of
building facilities for exploring water resources.
But they also need transparency for the money collected from
their water bills. They need to be told that the fees they have
paid for treating the wastewater have indeed been used for that
purpose and the money to build facilities for the more efficient
use of water resources has really been used in that area.
If the coupon system or other water saving mechanisms could be
popularized in more cities and the use of money from the water
bills made transparent to citizens, we have reason to believe that
the water shortage situation could be changed for the better.
(China Daily August 17, 2006)