North China's Hebei Province is suffering from a drought with
more than 530,000 hectares of farmland affected, the provincial
department of water resources said on Saturday.
The precipitation that Hebei received in August was 39 percent
less than the normal level. Zhangjiakou and Chengde cities are the
worst-hit areas, the department said in a report.
In Kangbao county of Zhangjiakou, 88 percent of all the county's
100,000 hectares of farmland saw a total crop failure due to the
drought, and 20,000 hectares of saplings were also affected, the
report said.
The drought in Zhangjiakou and Chengde has also reduced the
runoff in rivers, which provide water for Beijing and Tianjin on
the lower reaches.
The runoff at the headwaters of the Shandian River, a tributary
of the Luanhe River that Tianjin relies on for drinking water, has
been 0.2 cubic meter per second for the past 40 days, down from the
normal level of 0.5 cubic meter per second.
The Shandian River dried up in Inner Mongolia before flowing
into Luanhe.
(Xinhua News Agency September 3, 2007)
