Sunday, October 15 12:35 PM SGT

China's Yellow River in danger of running dry XIAN, China, Oct 15 (AFP) - Drought, deforestation, the overuse of hydraulics and water wastage are all threatening the Yellow River, the cradle of Chinese civilization, a Chinese academic has warned.

"The situation has worsened significantly since the beginning of the 1980s" Cao Mingming, professor of environmental geography at Xibei University in the northern city of Xian, says.

In 1998, 280 days of drainage were recorded at the point where the river crosses the overcrowded eastern province of Shandong.

Experts have been stationed along the banks of the Yellow River, at 4,345 kilometres (2,694 miles) China's second river after the Yangtse, to establish the main problems and recommend workable solutions.

For Cao, one of principal risks comes from exploitative activities upstream that reduce water levels downstream.

"Since the beginning of the 1980s, seven dams were constructed upstream, and an innumerable number along the river's tributaries," he said, recognizing that a drought that has ravaged northern China for several years hasn't helped matters.

In the northern province of Shaanxi 634 milimetres of rain fell in the 1970s, 594 in the 80s and just 561 in the 90s.

Professor of geology at Xibei University, Yue Leping, claims the decrease in water levels -- three time less than they were 50 years ago -- is mainly due to water wastage.

Small farmers in the northern province of Ningxia use five times the amount of water for irrigation than their southern compatriots, and factories constructed in the last 50 years are also using up a lot of water, he says.

Wastage could be reduced by forty percent, according to Yue, citing a study of cultivated areas of systematic reforestation which would relieve the problem.

The Yellow River, nicknamed the "sorrow of China," has overflowed more than 1,600 times and has changed its course 26 times in history, with hundreds of thousands of victims.

Its present course was shaped in the middle of the 19th century, while its bed, cluttered with alluvium and crammed into dams, rises by an average 10 cm every year.

For the first time since 1984, however, no drainage was recorded last year in the river's lower course, an improvement attributed to the setting up of a national control office.

The completion of the Xiaolangdi dam in the central province of Henan, would also stabilise water levels, according to Yue. Constructed to control water levels and collect silt, the dam should be fully operational by next year.

Desperate for a final solution to the problem, experts haven't yet dismissed the idea of diverting waters from the Yangtse to the Yellow River.

"But that would require a lot of money" Cao says.

http://sg.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/asia/afp/article.html?s=singapore/headlines/001015/asia/afp/China_s_Yellow_River_in_danger_of_running_dry.html

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), October 15, 2000