The villagers never expected that the first sip of tap water would go to the crops in the fields.
Cutting off the water pipe.
On August 17, Southern Rural Newspaper reported: In Rong Village, Ma Wei Town, Deqing County, Zhaoqing City, Guangdong Province, the faucet of the tap water pipeline by the village road was wide open. The gushing tap water roared into the irrigation channel and flowed towards the fields. The paddy fields which had been parched for nearly a month finally had water.
Why did the villagers of Rong Village make such a "sacrifice" to irrigate the farmland with tap water? Recently, reporters from the Southern Rural Newspaper rushed to Deqing to investigate.
Last year's late rice crop was mostly lost.
On the morning of August 13, Aunt Zhang, over sixty years old, from Rong Village, was leading her family members, both adults and children, busy transplanting rice seedlings in her own field. It had rained the night before, plus the injection of tap water these days, there was finally enough water in the field. After waiting for a long time, the whole family could finally transplant the late rice seedlings.
After the early rice harvest in July, it was time to transplant the late rice. However, in recent years, for the villagers of Rong Village, finding an irrigation water source during the late rice transplanting season has become a big problem.
According to the villagers, the irrigation water source of the village originally came from Jin Lin Reservoir (also known as "Panlongxia Reservoir") in Guanwei Town. The water flowed through an irrigation channel named "Jinma Dazun", passing through Jin Lin Village and Jin Xi Village in Guanwei Town, and finally reached Rong Village in Ma Wei Town. However, since 2005, the water volume of this irrigation channel has decreased year by year. In 2009, the Rong Village section of Jinma Dazun was almost dry, and with less rain, hundreds of acres of late rice in the village were basically lost.
Aunt Zhang's 2.4 mu of paddy fields also failed to escape the fate of drought-induced loss. She felt very heartbroken watching the almost mature rice die from drought in the field. To ensure livelihood, at the end of last year, she borrowed hundreds of kilograms of grain from relatives in other villages to solve the immediate problem. "This year, there was more rain during the early rice planting, so the harvest was not good; whether we can return the grain depends on the late rice." Aunt Zhang said.
But as the late rice transplanting time approached day by day, the irrigation channel at the edge of the field remained empty, making Aunt Zhang extremely anxious.
As part of the rural drinking water safety project in Deqing County, at the end of last year, the tap water pipeline was laid to the entrance of Rong Village. Last month, the pipeline started supplying water, but it hadn't yet reached every household, and there were no water meters installed. Seeing the parched fields, some people had the idea to use tap water.
Thus, some villagers found fire hoses, connected them, opened the valves, and diverted tap water into the fields, planting the late rice seedlings. Soon, other villagers followed suit. For a while, the tap water valves in Rong Village were open day and night, allowing tap water to flow into the already dried-up irrigation channels. "Although we know it's wasteful, we have no choice," the villagers told reporters from the Southern Rural Newspaper.
On August 13, Aunt Zhang finally managed to transplant the late rice seedlings as planned. By then, thanks to tap water, most of the late rice transplanting in Rong Village for this year had been completed.
Newly constructed government channels without water
Similarly, facing the increasingly drying up Jinma Dazun, the villagers of Jinxi in Guanwei Town do not have the "luxury" of using free tap water for irrigation like those in Rong Village.
"We can only pray for rain every day, hoping to plant the late rice as soon as possible," said the villagers of Jinxi.
Jinlin Reservoir is located upstream of the Mayu River, built during the "Great Leap Forward" period of the 1950s, covering an irrigation area of more than ten thousand mu.
However, the decreasing water supply from Jinma Dazun directly led to irrigation difficulties for nearly 4,000 mu of farmland in villages such as Jinxi and Rong Village, including over 2,000 mu in Rong Village and about a thousand mu in Jinxi Village.
On August 13, starting from Rong Village, I traveled along the approximately 10-kilometer-long Jinma Dazun towards Jinlin Reservoir. Along the way, I found that the water channel from Rong Village to Jinxi Village was almost dry, while there was still a small stream of water from Jinxi Village to Jinlin Village.
The villagers of Jinxi told reporters from the Southern Rural Newspaper that the water flow of Jinma Dazun connected to the reservoir began to decrease significantly at the beginning of the new millennium, becoming even worse after 2005. Initially, the villagers thought it was due to blockages in the irrigation channel, so they voluntarily cleared the channel, but to no avail, unable to stop the trend of reduced water in Jinma Dazun.
Later, some villagers discovered that a large pipe upstream of the third-level hydropower station of Jinlin Reservoir was the "culprit" causing the water shortage in the fields of the two downstream villages.
On August 13, the villagers led reporters from the Southern Rural Newspaper to the water diversion outlet near the third-level hydropower station of Jinlin, pointing to a large pipe with a diameter of about 80 centimeters, saying, "It diverts most of the water from Jinma Dazun." In comparison, the white plastic pipe beside it used for agricultural irrigation seemed much smaller.
"With this little flow, it can only satisfy the irrigation needs of nearby Jinlin Village; Jinxi Village and Rong Village basically can't count on it," the villagers told reporters from the Southern Rural Newspaper. Due to water shortages, the third-level hydropower station of Jinlin Reservoir was closed last year. A 200-meter-long hardened water channel built by the government in Jinxi Village in 2009 also became useless due to lack of water.
Due to the lack of irrigation water, many villagers in Jinxi and Rong Villages have been forced in recent years to change their paddy fields to grow drought-resistant crops such as peanuts. But despite this, it's still hard to achieve a good harvest.
Irrigation water aiding tourist attractions?
Since the large diversion pipe is buried deep underground, no one knows exactly where most of the channel water is being diverted. One popular theory among the villagers is that the surrounding tourist attractions might be intercepting the irrigation water from Jinma Dazun.
The area around Jinlin Reservoir is one of the most concentrated regions of high-quality tourism resources in Deqing County. Within just a few kilometers, there are three large scenic spots featuring "water". Besides the well-known Panlongxia Ecological Tourism Scenic Area, the Jinlin Water Village and Flower World Ecological Tourism Zone also opened to tourists in 2003 and 2005 respectively.
The mysterious reduction in irrigation water from Jinma Dazun coincides with the rapid development of nearby tourist attractions in recent years. The villagers said they had repeatedly asked relevant departments to investigate, but there has been no response so far. Thus, the "tourist attractions seizing water" theory has been increasingly accepted by more villagers.
"It must be the government developing tourism using the reservoir that caused our irrigation channel to lack water," Uncle Xin, a 67-year-old villager from Jinxi Village, firmly told reporters from the Southern Rural Newspaper.
On August 16, reporters from the Southern Rural Newspaper called the Deqing County Water Conservancy Bureau under the guise of a villager. A staff member indicated that he was unaware of the issue regarding the reduction in irrigation water from Jinma Dazun. (Source: Southern Rural Newspaper)