{"id":133242,"date":"2012-03-12T12:39:51","date_gmt":"2012-03-12T19:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=133242"},"modified":"2012-03-12T12:42:54","modified_gmt":"2012-03-12T19:42:54","slug":"sinking-city-solution-pump-groundwater-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2012\/03\/sinking-city-solution-pump-groundwater-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Sinking City Solution: Pump Groundwater Back?"},"content":{"rendered":"
The State Council recently ratified a five-year plan to address the sinking ground levels of over 79,000 square kilometres and more than 50 cities in China, which potentially threaten the stability of everything from high-rise buildings to high-speed rail lines. The problem is caused primarily by groundwater over-extraction to meet the demands of thirstily growing cities<\/a>, and has awoken Beijing’s passion for ambitious water-related<\/a> engineering projects<\/a>. Plans are afoot to re-inflate aquifers by pumping water back in<\/strong><\/a>; scepticism, however, abounds. From the South China Morning Post:<\/p>\n Tunnelling expert Professor Wang Mengshu of Beijing Jiaotong University, who is also a member of the prestigious Chinese Academy of Engineering, said he saw too much ambition and too little practicality in the land ministry’s plan \u2026.<\/p>\n Professor Feng Zhiming, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, said pumping water underground was too costly for most mainland cities \u2026.<\/p>\n Jiang [Mingjing, who teaches underground engineering at Tongji University in Shanghai] said Beijing’s most urgent task was not to stop land subsistence, but to set up a network to monitor sensitive areas and buildings.<\/p>\n “A city may take centuries to sink, but a skyscraper can collapse overnight,” he said. “We must have some focus, or we will be lost.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The State Council recently ratified a five-year plan to address the sinking ground levels of over 79,000 square kilometres and more than 50 cities in China, which potentially threaten the stability of everything from high-rise buildings to high-speed rail lines. The problem is caused primarily by groundwater over-extraction to meet the demands of thirstily growing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":962,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2,132,14744,14745,14746,100,6],"tags":[2645,14593,1216,3314,294,2598,6349],"class_list":["post-133242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-environmental-crisis","category-level-2-article","category-level-3-article","category-level-4-article","category-politics","category-sci-tech","tag-cities","tag-high-speed-rail","tag-skyscrapers","tag-south-to-north-water-diversion-project","tag-three-gorges-dam","tag-water-crisis","tag-water-shortage","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n