Beijing environmental authorities on Thursday suspended the controversial project to coat the lakebeds at Yuanmingyuan Park -- the Old Summer Palace -- with impermeable membrane.

Environmentalists and citizens objected to the project, calling it an ecological disaster that would reduce the natural seepage of water into the ground, affecting Beijing's underground water supply and turning the lakes into "dead pools."

Park administrators, however, said that coating the 133 hectares of lakebed to prevent seepage would save more than 1.5 million cubic meters of water annually.

The Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau announced on Wednesday that the project had not received approval from any environmental protection authorities. It is now suspended as authorities determine whether to allow it to proceed.

The scheme, work on which started in mid-February and would have soon been finished, was first publicly questioned by Zhang Zhengchun, an ecology professor of Lanzhou University.

Zhang visited Yuanmingyuan on March 22, World Water Day, only to find that the water in most of the lakes had been drained out. Throngs of workers were covering the lakebeds with a layer of white plastic film that will not decay even if buried for more than 80 years.

"The project is a disaster to the surrounding environment and to the heritage site itself," said Zhang.

The old park, originally built in 1709 and burned down by British and French troops in 1860, is a state-protected heritage site.

Mei Ninghua, director of the Beijing Bureau of Cultural Heritage, told China Daily on Thursday that any work on cultural relics sites must be undertaken with caution and must not destroy the original surroundings.

The park's administrative office justified the project as a last resort to save water, as more than 2.5 million cubic meters of water from the lakes seep into the ground every year. Zhu Hong, vice director of the administrative office, said most of the lakes were on the point of drying up for more than seven months each year.

However, Peking University's Professor Wu Bihu said earlier that the membrane would prevent the water from seeping into the ground, disturbing Beijing's underground water system.

Last summer, Vice Mayor Lu Hao called ground subsidence resulting from water depletion in underground aquifers a "major threat" to the city.

(China Daily, China.org.cn April 1, 2005)