Background
Beijing, the capital of China, is located in the alluvial plain on the northwestern North China Plain, covering an area of 6,490 square miles. It is traditionally lack of surface water collection yet relatively rich in underground water. Beijing has experienced rapid urbanization in recent years and it is also one of the most populous cities in China, with a population of about 21.54 million.
Beijing’s water supply consists of surface water, ground water, reclaimed water and South-to-North Transferred water. It receives approximately 4 billion cubic meters water in total annually. Most of surface water and groundwater supply are used as drinking water sources.Nowadays Beijing is facing a variety of severe water issues, including water scarcity, droughts caused by climate change, floods, water pollution, groundwater depletion and land subsidence, etc. From the literature research, Table 1 sought reasons behind each problem from five aspects, including topography, climate change, population growth, pollution activity, infrastructure condition, and water consumption habit.
To mitigate the negative impacts caused by these water-related problems as well as protect interests of citizens, Beijing has already started to deal with these water-related problems, as shown in Table 2. Table 3 indicates the active time of the existing solutions.
Problem
Among all of the water-related problems in Beijing, water quality issue is the most concerned one by the public. According to a 2017 water quality report, nearly 40 percent of surface water in Beijing is heavily polluted, which is categorized as Grade IV or even worse. Pollutants are mainly from industrial wastewater discharge and agricultural waste.
When it comes to groundwater quality in Beijing, there is little available information on Beijing’s groundwater pollution published by the government. A research focusing on Beijing Plain (accounts for 39 percent of Beijing) figures out that the water quality of more than half of groundwater under Beijing Plain is poor or even very poor. Nitrate contamination and organic contaminants such as trichloromethane, 1,2-dichloropropane, etc. have been constantly detected in groundwater. As the circulation time of groundwater is usually very long, some of the pollutants of groundwater have stayed for decades. Today, groundwater quality continues to deteriorate due to the increasing amount of new waste input from the lack of regulation for industrial waste disposal.
While South-North Water Transfer Project accounts for 22% of domestic water supply, surface water from Miyun and Guanting Aquifer and groundwater remain as the major drinking water supply sources. Assuming that the Tap Water Company has the capacity to treat the water to the National Drinking Water Standard (2012) (which was also claimed to be the case in 2010s by Beijing Water Authority and Beijing Water Company), tap water should be drinkable upon opening syphon at individual household. However, residential users don’t seem to trust this logic. According to China Water Risk report, only 59% households report to drink tap water, however, only after boiling. The rest in the study prefers either water boiled from filtered system or bottled water from branded companies.
If the water is claimed to be as good as what the authority has suggested, why would tap water consumption rate so low in Beijing? The authors argue that this consumption behavior results from technical, programming, and policy challenges. The technical challenge remains in the century-old distribution pipelines, especially those in central districts where the historic street grids are tight and pipe system narrow and twisted. Therefore, “red water” problem (water with a yellow coloration and high turbidity) disrupt residential user’s experience in the first flush of many mornings. The policy challenges, while generally related to the centralized government and decentralized responsibilities (Scott: subnational Hydropolitics), remain in the lack of enforceable regulation and clear responsibility deployment after the law. Last but not the least, no programming measure has been tailored toward educating the public about true cost behind water system or promoting the trust of tap water quality. This could enhance the indigenous disbelief on municipal water supply system, which was built upon residents’ visual memory of polluted river or the “red water”, or olfactory and taste-bud memory of the residual disinfectant from the treatment plant. As a result, the tap water became quite unfavorable, due to both the actual pollution happening outside of the water plant’s direct control, and the inherent belief of low tap water quality.
Potential Strategies
There is no single “silver bullet” to address Beijing’s tap water quality issue. Three inter-related strategies are proposed to approach the technical, policy, and programming challenges. Together, they aim to supply higher quality tap water for residential user while rebuild residents’’ trust for Beijing’s municipal tap water quality. Directly measurable outcomes would be 1) the increased consumption of tap water in general, and 2) the increased percentage of household who drink water directly off the tap without filtration system.
Assumptions
The proposed strategies would only be feasible under the following three assumptions. Firstly, the authors assume that the general political framework would stay the same — a centralized government and decentralized responsibilities. This means that local government finance is quite limited due to the tight budget control and decision-making of higher-level government. Meanwhile, the responsibility to deal with local water delivery issue, especially that due to the aging distribution pipeline problem,, would fall on local government. Secondly, Beijing government committed to incorporate the entire city into the municipal water service system by 2020. This suggest a priority for local government to invest in infrastructure improvement. Thirdly, the treatment plant indeed has developed the capacity to treat water of standard quality like they claim. Consequently, the existing monitor system is assumed to be ready to use or improve upon.
The proposal
With that being said, Beijing should first continuously replace and repair its aging water distribution pipeline system. Secondly, it should further develop its tap water quality monitor system and seek objective management party for good maintenance. And third, Beijing should promote public’s interest of using tap water as potable water through education and campaign programs. While the first strategy addresses the technical challenge the most, the third the programming challenge. The second takes on a little bit of all three challenges.
1. Replace & repair distribution pipelines
Many water distribution pipelines in Beijing were installed in the early 20th century and today are in very poor condition and continue to deteriorate. The aging water distribution pipelines are typically made of unlined cast iron, whose corrosion leads to the poor tap water quality at user end.
To cope with the poor tap water quality at residential end, first of all, Beijing should repair or replace its aging water distribution pipelines. And it is important for Beijing to first identify the conditions of its existing pipelines. Pipe nondestructive evaluation techniques such as electromagnetic testing (EMT) and eddy currents (EC) can be used to detect the leakage and hidden corrosion of the pipes. Although these technologies were initially developed or applied to the oil or gas industry whose pipelines are already well instrumented and large investments in instrumentation are routine, they have also been gradually applied to assess conditions for water and wastewater pipelines in some cities like Melbourne. These technologies can inform the decision making on which part of pipes should be worked on with a priority. After getting information of the existing pipe conditions, renewal technologies like internal coating, spray-on linings, etc. can be followed to repair or replace pipes.
Secondly, the water authorities should clearly define maintenance responsibility. Intuitively, Beijing Water Company who charges the residents and puts 70% of the received payment to water distribution should be fully responsible. In deed, in property management law, any water pipeline maintenance is assigned to the water company. However, increasing amount of property management company offers to help residents pay their water bill and charge them through monthly maintenance fee instead. While property management company couldn’t profit from such activity, there is no document exist that articulate on how maintenance responsibility could shift, and what would be an appropriate way to ensure the property management company would not benefit from such offer. Upon residents’ complaints (e.g., Mrs Wang), as a result, the water company and the property management company passed the bucks to other. Therefore, it is recommended to clarify the maintenance responsibility in an enforceable law and service contract to ensure residents’ right to know and the other two parties’ coordination in proper maintenance.
To fund any repair or replacement project, the water company could follow 3 ways: 1) through the capture of public investment, such as higher distribution fee in user fee structure; 2) through government special grants program, like New York’s PIPE Act which authorized 5 bn dollar over 10 yrs to improve aging infrastructure; 3) through bank loans and negotiation with Urban Redevelopment Council whose voice affects the amount of allowed loan.
2. Establish & maintain reliable water quality monitor system
The existing data collection and publishment through Beijing Water Company lack objectivity, as it is essentially the same company that collect user fee and promise infrastructure improvement. In order to help build up consumer base, a water authority should present the effort to ensure objectivity and transparency. A 3rd party that aims at collect, manage, and establish database might be worth trying. Despite government here is known to be conservative and regid, initiatives such as MyH2O partner with research institutes to monitor, collect, and publish data to national tap water quality. It could be worth trying in a more local scale, given the proximity to renowned Chinese universities nearby.
At the same time, visitors who are interested in water quality data should be granted access to the database and interpretation regardless of their background disparity. Beijing has fortunately already started a citizen monitored quality system online. However, the provided data is very difficult to understand.
As the existing platform for data publishment is not under a good maintenance and has no improvements for several years, it is necessary for Beijing Water Authority to attract more high-quality workforce to work on it. It can just learn from the water career fair held on Singapore International Water Week to create a platform to encourage and bring new entrants into the water sector. Also, Beijing Water Authority can provide their employees with incentives like competitive reward and bonus system to inspire their working enthusiasm.
3. Promote the interest of using tap water as potable water
The third solution is highly programming focused and the lowest cost. Education about the drinking water treatment system helps users understand what would actually affect the healthiness, color and taste of the water they get from their syphons. Community leaders could host a treatment plant tour for citizens, such as the one in Norman, Oklahoma. Council member Breea Clark organized a community events to show residents step by step of how water is taken from Lake Thunderbird all the way to their home.Education for higher-level decision makers and professionals from business, science, and sociology is also important. Together with citizens, the discussion of the quality disparity between plant output and user experience could generate new public knowledge.
Once the authority is confident about the consistency of water quality, campaigns on highlighting advantages of tap water could be carried out to further build sustainable consumer base. New York is working on Get Green Now initiative to highlight the higher standard of tap water over bottled water, the better taste, the more environmental-friendliness, and the lower cost.
The first biggest challenge for the entire solution maybe financial. In general, maybe it is also good to create an infrastructure condition evaluation (ASCE) and bond evaluation like (Moody’s) to help make bond issuance possible.
Please see the following table for details on the proposal’s responsible parties, relative cost, and years of implementation.
Conclusion
In the past decades, Beijing has witnessed the dynamics in water user sector share change. As the heavy industry and agriculture out-migrated to accommodate the increasing urban population settlement. Meanwhile, environmental concern and population demand for water increases, raising water share for environmental and domestic water. In terms of water resources, Beijing is gradually less dependent on groundwater and more on transfer water. While the transfer water may mitigate the water scarcity in short-term and fast manner, it will face continuous challenge by climate change and leave negative socio-economic impact behind. Innovative water management and law regulation is becoming trendy, and water users are identified as sources of public investment on water infrastructure maintenance.
While some of these trend are promising and some still challenging, the proposal in this blog aims at improving water consumption through municipal water system and raising public awareness of the issues not only in drinking water, but also those in the wider, systematic context. Operating within the unique political system that is designed to not promote participatory planning, the proposal poses the question of water system problems by first asking residential users to understand water quality in their daily life, then encouraging them to reflect on how their consumption behavior could urge the improvement of the existing water supply system to become more transparent and trustful. Lastly, this proposal hopes to empower individuals to participate in grassroot campaigns that disseminate appropriate information to build up public knowledge and exercise participatory planning. Hopefully, in the next decade, Beijing water could bring its citizens proud, knowledge, serve as an example for all the other China cities in promoting a parallel improvement in water infrastructure and government-individual relationship.
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