中国欲引渤海水解新疆渴

中国干旱西北地区的地方官员采取了新措施推进一项庞大的调水工程，该工程将从数千英里外的海边抽取海水，通过由塑料和玻璃纤维制成的管道将其输送到新疆的沙漠。

官员们的想法是对部分海水进行淡化处理，再将剩余部分灌溉到新疆干涸的盐湖和沙漠盆地中，希望海水将蒸发，从而增强干旱的中国北部和西北部降雨。

当地政府官员和水利专家上周五在新疆举行会议，为这项建议提供新的推动力。按照提议，海水将取自中国东北部海岸的渤海，经由内蒙古输送至新疆，途中将经过四处山脉，最高处超过1,280米。

一些水利专家和环保人士对这项提议提出了批评，将它与三峡大坝和引发争议的南水北调工程相提并论，后者将长江之水从中国南方地区输送到北方。

但组织上周五会议的地方官员李新娥为这一想法进行了辩护，认为这是缓解水资源短缺的为数不多的途径之一。她说，水资源短缺正阻碍着中国西北地区的发展。

新疆自治区政府发展研究中心经济发展研究处负责人李新娥说，目前正在进行的长江南水北调工程将缓解中部和北部地区的水资源短缺状况。

Reuters她对本报说，但中国西北部地区依然面临着水供应问题。

她说，新疆政府2006年时曾向国务院提交过一份有关该提议的报告，当时温家宝总理阅读过后要求进行更加详细的研究，如今研究已经完成。

中央政府没有回应记者的置评请求。但据本报见到的国务院研究室2007年一份报告的复印件，报告认可了该项目的可行性，认为它将有助于缓解水资源短缺、减少灰尘污染、提高煤炭产量。

李新娥说，中央政府尚未分配资金，也没有指派哪一个政府部门对该项目进行监督。新疆、辽宁和内蒙古的地方官员正在推进自己的计划。近年来，东北省份辽宁和北方地区的内蒙古都遭受了严重的水资源短缺问题。

中国十二五规划上月获得中国共产党中央委员会的批准，规划包括呼吁发展海水淡化产业，但未提及任何具体项目。

李新娥说，当然，关于海水淡化也有不同意见。一些地质和气象部门认为，淡化海水可能会为生态环境带来灾难。但实际上，海水淡化的技术性难题已被攻破。

李新娥说，中东、美国和欧盟(European Union)均在海水淡化技术方面取得了重大进展。位于美国的国际脱盐协会(International Desalination Association)也表示，过滤膜和蒸馏技术的进步近年来已降低了海水淡化成本，提高了淡化的能源效率。

目前还没有预测海水淡化项目的总费用或具体需用多少立方的海水。一些中国专家在周五的会议上说，他们预计将海水运至新疆的成本约为每立方米7元人民币（合1.05美元），相比之下，南水北调项目每立方米的运水成本是20元。

不过，其他人则认为海水淡化项目并不切实可行，他们敦促政府应把政策重点放在限制用水和废水循环方面，而不是将数十亿美元投在一个很可能需要几十年才能建立起来的项目上。

环保人士把海水淡化项目跟耗资230亿美元、2006年竣工的三峡大坝做了对比。中国政府表示，修建三峡大坝是终结数百年来年年爆发致命洪水的最好方式，也是为中国经济繁荣发展提供能源推动力的最佳方法。然而批评人士坚持认为，修建三峡大坝成本过高，致使140万人做无谓的被迫拆迁，并且还有可能增加山体滑坡、地震和破坏长江生态系统的风险。

加拿大多伦多环保组织国际探索(Probe International)的负责人亚当斯(Patricia Adams)说，新疆的海水淡化项目更像是一个宣传产物，而不是经过慎重思考的科学之举。该组织曾经开展过反对修建三峡大坝的活动。

亚当斯说，我认为这个海水淡化项目无利可图，而且不切实际，这就是一个没有市场约束和公众监督的政府才会想出来的一个项目，更不要说对其贯彻执行了。

她说，海水淡化项目不是在认真地满足实际用水需求和解决实际的环境问题，它将耗费巨大的资金成本，中国人经受不起这样的浪费。

Jeremy Page

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 Chinese Officials Push Xinjiang Water Plan
Local officials in China's arid northwest have launched a new push for a vast water-diversion project that would pump raw sea water thousands of miles from the coast to the deserts of Xinjiang through a pipeline made of plastic and fiberglass.

The idea is to desalinate some of the seawater, but to use the rest to fill Xinjiang's dried-up salt lakes and desert basins in the hope that it will evaporate and encourage rainfall over drought-stricken areas of northern and northwestern China.

Local government officials and water experts held a conference in Xinjiang on Friday to give new impetus to the proposal under which seawater would be pumped across four mountain ranges, and up to a height of more than 1,280 metres, on its way from the Bohai Sea off the coast of northeast China via Inner Mongolia to Xinjiang.

Several water experts and environmental activists have condemned the proposal, comparing it to the giant Three Gorges dam and another controversial scheme to channel the waters of the Yangtze River from southern to northern China.

But Li Xin'e, a local official who organized Friday's conference, defended the idea as one of the only ways to alleviate the water shortages which she said were crippling development across northwestern China.

Li, who heads the economics department of Xinjiang's Development Research Center, said the project now under way to divert the Yangtze from south to north would ease water shortages in central and northern China.

'However, northwestern China still faces a water-supply problem,' she told The Wall Street Journal.

She said the Xinjiang government had filed a report on the proposal to the State Council -- China's cabinet -- in 2006 and Premier Wen Jiabao had read it and asked for more detailed research, which has now been completed.

The central government didn't respond to requests for comment. But the State Council Research Office produced a report in 2007 which agreed that the project was feasible and could help to alleviate water shortages, reduce dust pollution, and boost coal production, according to a copy seen by The Wall Street Journal.

Li said the central government hadn't yet allocated funding, or a government department to oversee the project. Local authorities were pushing ahead with their own plans in Xinjiang, the northeastern province of Liaoning and the northern region of Inner Mongolia. Liaoning and Inner Mongolia have both suffered severe water shortages in recent years.

China's latest five-year plan, which was approved by the Communist Party's Central Committee last month, included a call to 'encourage seawater desalination,' but didn't mention any specific projects.

'Of course, there are some different opinions,' Li said. 'Some geology and meteorology departments thought the seawater could bring ecological disaster. But actually, the technical barriers have been removed.'

She said big advances had been made in desalination technology in the Middle East, the U.S. and the European Union. The U.S.-based International Desalination Association also says advances in filter-membrane and distillation technology have lowered costs and made the industry more energy-efficient in recent years.

There is no estimate yet of the total cost of the project or the volume of water involved. Some Chinese experts at Friday's conference said they expected the cost of transporting sea water to Xinjiang to be about 7 yuan ($1.05) per cubic meter, compared to 20 yuan ($3) for the south-north Yangtze diversion scheme.

Others, however, call the project unfeasible and urge the government to focus instead on limiting consumption and recycling waste water rather than investing billions of dollars in a project that would probably take decades to build.

Environmental activists, meanwhile, likened the scheme to the $23 billion Three Gorges Dam, which was completed in 2006. The government says the dam is the best way to end centuries of deadly annual floods and to provide energy to fuel China's economic boom. Critics argue that it cost too much, forced 1.4 million people from their homes unnecessarily and could increase the risk of landslides, earthquakes and damage to the Yangtze's ecology.

Patricia Adams, the head of Probe International, a Toronto-based environmental group that campaigned against the Three Gorges, said the Xinjiang scheme was 'more the product of propaganda than serious science.'

'I would say the project is uneconomic and impractical-- one that only a government undisciplined by markets and public oversight would ever contemplate, let alone implement,' she said.

'This isn't a serious attempt to meet real water needs and solve real environmental problems and it would be a terrible waste of money that the Chinese people can ill afford.'

Jeremy Page