The country's best-known scenic spring is in danger of drying up
for good due to the over-exploitation of groundwater supplies for
industrial use, experts have warned.
Dating back 2,600 years, Baotu Spring, or the "First Spring
Under Heaven", is located in downtown Jinan, the capital of East
China's Shandong Province, and famed for the
thunderous roars it makes as columns of water surge upward from its
three outlets.?
However, it was reported yesterday that the spring's underground
water level had fallen to 27.59 m, lower than the "worrying" level
of 27.6 m and just 58 mm higher than the point at which it might
stop flowing altogether.
For the spring to be able to generate steady gushes, the
underground water level must be at least 28.5 m.
Experts have said that as the exploitation of groundwater is
showing no signs of stopping, the situation is unlikely to improve
before the May Day Golden Week, which starts on May 1.
The continuing dry weather might also be detrimental to the
spring's flow, experts said.
In a bid to rekindle the spring's vitality, the Jinan municipal
government recently ran a campaign to save water. As well as
calling on locals to reduce their daily consumption, it carried out
large-scale inspections of industrial plants in an effort to find
ways to make them more water-efficient.
Shang Guangyu, an official with the Shandong Hydrology and Water
Resources Survey Bureau, said: "The new water supply projects being
developed in the eastern part of the city will help ease industrial
demand for groundwater."
Baotu Spring is just one of more than 70 springs in Jinan that
are at risk of stopping flowing. "Most of the groundwater is taken
for industrial use, with firms in Jinan drawing a combined 400,000
cubic meters every day," Shang said.
Li Shixin, an expert on springs, said Jinan had been suffering
from a drought since last autumn and that this had contributed to
the lowering of the groundwater level.
He added that as Jinan was planning to introduce an agricultural
irrigation system, the situation was likely to get worse.
In the 1930s, Jinan's springs flowed all year long. But due to
drier weather conditions and the constant exploitation of
underground sources, several of them dried up in the late 1990s.
Baotu Spring stopped flowing for 926 days between 1999 and
2001.
(China Daily April 13, 2007)
