[By Zhou Tao / Shanghai Daily]

In the village of Huashan in Hubei Province, renowned as the "Land of a Thousand Lakes," the residents have been accustomed to lining up with plastic buckets to carry home water delivered by fire tanker trucks.

The scarce water was used carefully. A family would wash their hands or rinse rice first, then use it to water paddy fields and for livestock, said Yu Chunming, Party chief of the village. "The villagers don't even want to discard the water that has been used several times, no matter how dirty it has become."

In the past two months, a severe drought has been plaguing parts of Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, located near the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the country's longest river.

As of Sunday, the dry weather had left more than three million people short of drinking water, said a statement from the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters (SFDH). The drought has also affected about three million hectares of crops, including early- and middle-season rice and cotton, and wreaked havoc on aquaculture businesses in the five provinces, said the statement.

Low rainfall

Since the beginning of this year, the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River have seen a record low rainfall not experienced since 1961, with 40 to 60 percent less rainfall than usual.

Meteorologists blame the "La Nina" phenomenon, which occurred from July 2010 to April 2011, for the unseasonable drought, saying it disrupted normal atmospheric circulation and prevented warm, humid air currents from reaching the river's downstream areas. Meanwhile, some hydrologists and water officials believe China's weak management of water resources has amplified the impact of the drought on people's livelihoods.

In early spring, some reservoirs and lakes along the middle reaches of the Yangtze River began discharging water, as they do every year, to gear up for the upcoming flood season. "In our section of the Yangtze River, we have many drainage facilities to release floodwaters, but almost no water pumping equipment," said Lei Yunxue, an official with the flood control and drought relief headquarters in Hubei's Jianli County.

The Chinese government started to spend heavily in dam and dike projects after massive flooding of parts of the Yangtze River killed 4,150 people in 1998.

"The move was fully justified. But the government should be aware that water conservancy is not the same thing as a flood control system," said Fang Bing, deputy general manager of Fuwa Group Co Ltd, a grain processing company in Jianli County.

Lei suggested the government attach equal importance to flood control and drought relief work in areas that usually enjoy abundant rainfall.

Last year, a prolonged spring drought left tens of millions of people without easy access to drinking water in southwest China's Yunnan, Sichuan, and Guizhou provinces, the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and Chongqing - all traditionally wet areas. "Given that extreme weather has become frequent, the current water conservancy scheme is unscientific," Lei said.

So far, China has allocated 1.96 billion yuan (US$302 million) to drought relief work. Further, 16,000 temporary water pumping facilities have been set up and 6.6 billion cubic meters of water have been diverted from mainstreams of the Yangtze River and nearby lakes in the five provinces to ease the drought, according to the SFDH.

Standing in the luxuriant weeds, one would have never have imagined that the spot is the center of the Poyang Lake, China's largest freshwater lake, in Jiangxi Province.

Government data shows that due to the dry spell the lake's water level dropped by nearly seven meters year-on-year and water surface area has shrunk to less than one-third of the area in normal years.

Lakes play a pivotal role in mitigating both droughts and floods, since they can be used to accommodate water during the flood season and to discharge water during the drought.

In fact, China's lakes, including the Poyang Lake, have been steadily contracting for decades under the effects of climate changes and human activities, according to Chen Lei, Minister of Water Resources.

Once having 3,000 natural lakes, China has lost around 1,000 of them during the past 50 years. This was partly caused by a massive campaign of "farmland reclamation from lakes" in the densely populated Yangtze River basin beginning in the 1950s. The reclamation was halted in the 1990s by the central government because of environmental concerns.

Vanishing lakes

In recent years, some areas are still creating new land by filling in lakes so they can build homes, driven by skyrocketing real estate prices. Similarly, some rivers in the drought-stricken areas can no longer provide water for emergency use.

Because of the lack of dredging, many riverbeds have risen greatly, thus resulting in lower capacity for water. In addition, some hydropower stations have choked off rivers when downstream areas are in dire need of water; the stations on the upper stream instead use water to generate electricity.

Labor shortages have also impeded the development of rural water conservancy, said Li Xingzhong, head of the agriculture bureau in Jianli County. Nearly 600,000 young people among the county's 1.5 million residents have sought jobs outside their hometown, Li said.

Lack of investment is another problem, according to Xu Zhilong, deputy head of the county's water resources bureau. "We've planned to build nine sets of culverts and sluices to divert water in the future in response to the drought. But the budget is unbearably huge for the county's finances," Xu said.

From 2011 to 2020, China's investment in water conservancy projects is expected to reach 4 trillion yuan, almost four times as much as that spent during the past 10 years, Chen Lei said earlier this month at a national work conference held in Changchun, capital city of northeastern Jilin Province.

The investment will be used in various projects, including consolidating 15,900 small reservoirs by 2013 and another 2,721 large and medium-sized reservoirs by 2015, Chen said.

He added that the move was aimed at strengthening China's water conservancy capacities in fighting droughts and floods.