not just heat

It’s not just heat that’s been on the way up recently, but water use, too. According to 北京晚报/Beijing Evening News, Beijing has set a new record for water supplied to the city. Twice. Well, a record for “so far this year”, followed by a “most ever”. But first, a clarification: This article is dated July 6, so where it says “yesterday”, it means July 5. It only showed up in my Kaixin001 feed this morning. Anyway, here’s the record setting:

市自来水集团介绍,在7月4日城区日供水量达268万立方米创出今年新高后,昨天市区日供水量达286万立方米,超过去年夏季278万立方米的历史最高日 供水量,也创出北京百年供水史上最高水平,已接近市区的日供水能力。统计数据显示,昨天高时供水量出现在9时到10时,1小时供水量达16.48万立方 米。

The municipal water supply group said that after the amount of water supplied to the urban area reached 2.68 million cubic metres on July 4, setting a new record for this year, yesterday the amount of water supplied to the city area reached 2.86 million cubic metres, breaking the historic record set last summer of 2.78 million cubic metres of water supplied in one day, setting the record for the largest amount supplied in Beijing’s 100-year history of mains water supply, approaching the maximum amount that can be supplied to the city. Statistics show that yesterday’s peak water use was betwen 9 and 10, with 164,800 cubic metres supplied in one hour.

[Yes, as always, I have played it a bit fast and loose with aspects of the translation. Corrections and improvements are welcome]

Apparently demand for water is so high that the water supply group is considering limiting water supply to certain industries for the duration.

Now, I’ve said it a million times before, and I’ll probably repeat it several million more times, but one of the things that worries me most about Beijing’s future is water:

北京连续十年干旱,虽然今年降水多于往年,但是密云水库的蓄水量反而低于往年。今天上午,密云水库的蓄水量为9.4亿立方米,比去年同期减少2.4亿立方 米。此前不久,来自河北三座水库的2亿立方米水,经过南水北调京石段工程持续进入北京。河北水抵达北京团城湖后,经过管道进入市自来水厂,加工过滤后进入 千家万户。市自来水集团称:“目前北京自来水管网中三分之一的水是河北用水。管道中的每一滴自来水都非常珍贵,希望市民要珍惜使用。”

After Beijing’s 10 years of continuous drought, although precipitation has been higher this year, the amount of water stored in the Miyun Reservoir is actually lower than in previous years. This morning, Miyun Reservoir held 940 million cubic metres of water, 240 million cubic metres less than at the same time last year. Not long ago, 200 million cubic metres of water from three reservoirs in Hebei entered Beijing via the Beijing-Shijiazhuang section of the South-North Water Diversion Project. After Hebei water reaches Beijing’s Tuancheng Hu, it is piped into a municipal water treatment plant, and then after treatment and filtering enters the city’s households. The municipal water supply group said, “Currently a third of the water in the city’s pipe network is from Hebei. Every drop of water in the pipes is very precious. We hope the citizens will cherish it.”

I certainly do not like the look of those numbers.

Anyways, that’s enough breakfast-time blogging and dodgy as hell translation. I do still have exam papers awaiting grades.

About the Author

wangbo

A Kiwi teaching English to oil workers in Beijing, studying Chinese in my spare time, married to a beautiful Beijing lass, consuming vast quantities of green tea (usually Xihu Longjing/西湖龙井, if that means anything to you), eating good food (except for when I cook), missing good Kiwi ale, breathing smog, generally living as best I can outside Godzone and having a good time of it.

2 thoughts on “not just heat

  1. Sounds rather possible, even with the dodgy translation. Just been looking at an photo exhibition at Cafe Zarah in Gulou Dong Dajie, and what you got here, pretty much tallies what the exhibition mentions (worth checking out for the great pictures too).

    SO I would not be surprised if Beijing is indeed putting caps on water usage later this summer

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