LIJIAZHUANG VILLAGE, China–On a sunny afternoon on the parched plains of drought-stricken Hebei province, Fan Xiangnu, a solid, straight-talking grandmother of 63, grits her teeth, and sums up the local environmental situation as well as any high-priced consultant.
"There's just no water," she says bluntly, squinting into the sunshine. "So there's no wheat."
As she speaks, just 300 metres away a legion of labourers is hard at work building a broad canal to transport desperately needed water supplies.
But the canal won't supply her family – or those of the other parched peasants in this community.
Instead, the canal will take 300 million cubic metres of Hebei's remaining waters and rush them some 300 kilometres north to Beijing.
It's all part of the national effort to prepare for the Olympic Games.
The central government wants Beijing green and gleaming come August.
Green and gleaming it will be – even if it means others may have to go without.
A government slogan painted on a nearby wall trumpets the goal, urging everyone to support the project to "guarantee a secure water supply for the Olympics."
Booming Beijing's historic thirst – the parched capital has long depended on Hebei for its water – continues to reach ever deeper into the Chinese countryside.
The coming of the Olympics will spike that thirst with added demand – about 30 per cent during the Games.
But slaking it has come with consequences.
More than 20,000 people have been displaced by the canal; local wells have been disrupted; and many here have been left scrambling to scratch out a living.
Beijing may be dry, and the games are clearly important. But Hebei is battling its own "severe drought," a local official told reporters here this week.
For locals, the digging of the canal has compounded their problems. The construction project has disrupted the water table.
"Look at how dry this land is," says Kang Guomin, a 53-year-old former wheat farmer turned part-time construction worker.
With his own well completely dried up, he now buys supplies from other peasants and has it transported by truck, he says
As Kang explains his plight, standing next to a set of cracked mud cellars made for mushroom cultivation, a knot of locals gathers.
One woman complains that her well too went dry and she had a new and deeper one dug.
"The old one was 20 metres deep," she says. "The new one had to go 40 metres deep before they hit water."
The new well cost the equivalent of about $285 – a sizeable sum in the countryside.
Was she compensated?
"I had to pay that out of my own pocket," she says.
But to its credit, the government has paid for local land expropriated in order to build the canal.
Kang Jinghao, a 36-year-old father of four, said he was paid about $4,285 for his small farm that was unfortunately located directly in the path of the canal.
"I'm not sure if that was for one year or two years – or if it is a lifetime payment," says Kang. "They didn't make it clear."
Like a few other families in the area, he has now turned to mushroom farming to survive.
"How can I possibly make enough to support a family of four growing mushrooms?" he asks.
But the environmental troubles in drought-stricken Hebei are by no means an isolated instance.
The entire north of China has been wracked by water shortages for years and the building of the canal to bring "emergency" supplies of water to Beijing has shone a much needed light on China's overall water troubles.
The canal is actually part of a much larger plan called the North-South Water Diversion Project.
The overall plan, which was originally championed by late leader Mao Zedong, is to try to divert water from the water-rich south to China's water-poor north.
Earlier this year, with the Olympics approaching, government officials ordered that the portion of the project bringing water to Beijing from Hebei – originally scheduled to be completed by 2010 – was to be speeded up and completed before the Games.
"The current situation constitutes a crisis for Beijing," says environmental engineer Wang Jian, who for years worked for the Beijing Environmental Protection Administration. "And at this time there really is no long-term solution."
For years Beijing's population growth and its water supplies have been going in completely opposite directions, Wang explains.
Today the city's water reserves are drastically drying up; Beijing is overdrawing ground water; and its population continues to explode.
In 1911, Beijing was home to just 1.1 million. By 1976, it had grown to about 7 million.
But in the last 32 years, the city has become home to another 10 million people, with an overall population today of 17.4 million.
Meanwhile, says Wang, the city's two main reservoirs, Guanting, completed in 1954 and Miyun, completed in 1960, today cumulatively hold less than 15 per cent of their capacity.
In fact, of a system of 16 reservoirs around the city that can hold a total capacity of 9.6 billion cubic metres of water, current reserves now stand at just 1.2 billion – 13.5 per cent of capacity.
As a consequence, Beijing is drawing more and more ground water.
Environmentalists note Beijing should be able to safely draw ground water at a rate of 2.45 billion cubic metres per year. But available data show it is currently drawing at a rate of between 2.65 to 2.7 billion, says Wang.
He cites as well plans for the development of a Greater Beijing that will rival Shanghai as the nation's economic engine.
Where, he asks, will the water resources come from to support such continued expansion?
"It's worrying," he says.
Zhang Junfeng, who monitors China's rivers for the non-governmental Green Earth Volunteers, says the water scarcity in China "defies imagination."
"I think people are putting too much hope in the South-North Water Diversion Project," he observes, poring over a relief map in his tiny office in Beijing's Anzhenli district.
"Because of persistent drought, reservoirs can't meet needs ... ground water is being over exploited ... people have to dig new and deeper wells.
"This is a problem that can't simply be solved by ingenuity," he says, adding he believes Beijing may be "doomed."
But more hopeful, is Ma Jun, arguably China's most famous environmentalist. His groundbreaking 1999 book, China's Water Crisis, has been compared with Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.
"The water brought from the south of China will not be able to solve all of our problems. It will only fill part of the gap," he says.
There's nothing unusual about the diversion project, he notes. It's not unique to China. In the United States, engineers are diverting the Colorado River to supply Arizona and California. In Spain a similar project is underway.
"In Canada, of course, with such a small population and huge water resources, you don't have to worry about such things. But the rest of the world isn't like that.
"For us, in the long run though, it's got to be about conservation, rather than expanding supply. Because there just won't be enough supply," he says. "There's a limit."