Water is Beijing's dirty little Olympics secret

Rapid urban development dried out the Chaobai nine years ago. The groundwater in Shunyi dropped at twice the rate of the rest of Beijing from 2006 to 2007, according to the Ministry of Water Resources.

"From the beginning I was against the Olympics," Dai said. "There is not enough for water for us to hold Olympic Games, but they didn't listen."

Beijing's groundwater, which has fallen 76 feet in the last 50 years, is overexploited, experts warn. And construction has paved over the city, so rain drains away instead of soaking through the earth to replenish the groundwater.

A polluted and damaged ecosystem in turn creates less rain, so more water is needed to irrigate city parks and other greenery, said Wu Jisong, a senior adviser to the Beijing Olympic Games Organizing Committee and former director general of the Department of Water Resources.

Similarly, more recycled wastewater is now needed to feed Beijing's artificial lakes, said John Pan, a director at the Beijing Water Authority.

"We cannot blame nature," he said at a recent conference in Beijing. "We must realize that it is the human activity and destruction that has briefly affected the water circulation so we should find effective ways to solve the problem."

Easier said than done in a developing country focused on economic growth. But time appears to be running out.

Waste, fertilizer and pesticides so contaminated one of Beijing's two main reservoirs, that the city stopped using it for residential water or agriculture in 1997. The other reservoir, the Miyun, is down to one-third the water it had 10 years ago, despite government efforts to cut water use by farms and move industry out of the area.

A local farmer, Zhao Fuyin, said the water once lapped at the bases of the trees around the reservoir.

"It has been a government priority to preserve this area," said Zhao as he watched a couple of donkeys amble along the reservoir's dry slopes. "But the reservoir is just not enough."

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