Massive underground lake offers lifeline to northwest
Monday, February 10, 2003
china.scmp.com
ASSOCIATED PRESS in Beijing
Scientists have discovered a huge underground lake in China's arid northwest, boosting hopes for poverty relief in one of the country's most remote and sparsely populated regions.
The lake beneath the Taklamakan desert has a capacity of 36 billion cubic metres, about the same as the 632 sq km reservoir being filled behind the massive Three Gorges Dam, newspapers and Xinhua reported yesterday.
The find resulted from a comprehensive survey of water resources in the Xinjiang region that found about one billion cubic metres of underground water could be exploited annually, Xinhua said. New supplies coming from about 50 different underground sources could alleviate the need to build 10 major reservoirs, it said.
"Our findings can provide a hydrological and geological foundation for the solution of civilian, industrial and agricultural water consumption," a top geologist, Wang Min, said.
Northwestern China, including Xinjiang, accounts for one third of the country's territory but only about 90 million of its 1.3 billion people.
The nation launched a major drive to develop the area two years ago, hoping to close a yawning income gap with the east and more tightly bind its often restive population of ethnic minorities to the rest of the country.
While the region boasts deposits of gas, oil and other minerals, its native populations remain heavily dependent on agriculture, especially the growing of grapes and melons for sale to other parts of China. About 10 million people in the region still lack access to clean drinking water.
Well drilling could help improve access to drinking water, but scientists are stressing the need for sustainable development to ensure limited water resources last.
The Xinhua report did not say how water would be drawn from the lake beneath the Taklamakan, a wasteland the size of Poland where temperatures can hit 47 degrees Celsius in summer. |
