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Drought Hits Millions of Chinese
Some 3.2 million people in east China's Shandong Province are plagued by water shortage due to a protracted drought.
Water conservancy officials said more than 5,000 villages are threatened by shortages of water. A number of farmers are forced to trek a long distance to fetch water.
In some places, people have queued up to get water. The province has been hit by drought for the last 22 months. Since September 1998, precipitation was merely 620 millimeters, the fewest since 1949, when the People's Republic of China was founded.
The level of groundwater keeps dropping and water in reservoirs stand at around three billion cubic meters, 30 percent less than the average amount of previous years. Many reservoirs have even run dry, officials said.
Meteorological departments forecast that the province will not have much rain as high temperatures will continue.
Drought is also striking northeast China's Liaoning, affecting one million hectares of farmland, or a quarter of the province's total. So far, 30,000 hectares of crops have died.
"If it does not rain heavily in the near future, I fear 360,000 people and more than 200,000 head of domestic animals will not have enough drinking water," said Zhong Gang, director of the Provincial Water Conservancy Department.
Liaoning has launched an emergency campaign against the drought, motivating people to irrigate their farms. Some 72 million yuan ( about 8.7 million U.S. dollars) has been allocated for this purpose.
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