Mar 11
15
Analysis – Will Desalination Save China’s Economic Miracle?
China’s Development is Already Reaching Its Limits in Some Parts of the Country.
Wang Xiushun has a pipe dream. He intends to transport sea water from the Bohai Sea on China’s east coast through a pipeline to Inner Mongolia, as a pilot project, then on to Xinjiang, in the northwest. The Inner Mongolia stage of the project would take the sea water more than 600 kilometers northward, from a source along the coast near Tianjin.
The second stage of the project would see the sea water piped westward to Lop Nur lake in Xinjiang, nearly 2,300km distant. Wang is chairman of the Xilin Gol Hongyuan Seawater Desalination Corporation. Though he believes the primary stage of the project would greatly benefit the coal mining operations in Inner Mongolia, his ultimate goal is to turn Xinjiang into a veritable oasis with desalinated water.
With central government circles concerned about the possibility of the greatest drought in 200 years striking the northeast’s wheat belt, official debate about the feasibility of such a project is becoming more vocal.
China has just one-third of the world average water resources. North China has only about 15% of the country’s water, 55-percent of its population and 60-percent of its cropland.
Wang’s plan is to first prove the engineering and economic feasibility of the Bohai-Xinjiang Water Transfer project by transporting water to the coal fields of the Xilin Gol League, in Inner Mongolia, where great deposits of lignite await mining. Coal mining, however, is water intensive: each ton of coal extracted from the ground is washed with four to five cubic meters of water. Inner Mongolia, however, is desperate for water.
Many of the nearly 1,400 lakes in the region have dried up, according to China Daily. The Shenhua group, a coal miner, gave a nod to the 10 yuan per ton price for water Wang quoted the company’s operations in Inner Mongolia.
The project, however, has proven a political and academic powder keg. Zhang Xuewen, Director of the Xinjiang Meterological Research Institute, published a strong denunciation of the project in an article in the January 28, 2011 edition of Science Pictorial Magazine. He cited what he considered the engineering impossibilities of shipping sea water cross-country without despoiling the ecology along the route, and the changes wrought to the Xinjiang geography and meteorology should salt water be deposited in its plains.
The article came on the heels of a forum in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, in November 2010, to promote the Bohai Sea-Xinjiang transfer plan. Hongyuan’s Wang helped organize the event, along with local officials and an industry association. Scientists at the conference unanimously agreed the project would remake the Lap-Nur lake region into a paradise on earth.
China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), however, has yet to decide on the project, which crosses multiple provinces and conveys a cargo for which the NDRC has no transport regulations: sea water. Clearly, the Commission is considering the project with more than just a pinch of salt.
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