Some 110 Chinese cities face chronic water shortages, with a further 490 suffering from insufficient supply, reported Xinhua. The shortfall of about 7bn cubic metres of water costs Yn300bn each year. Beijing, which only has about 10 months of water supply left, has been preparing emergency water extraction projects expected to provide about 40m cubic metres of water.
However, an over-reliance on extracting groundwater is causing dangerous drops in water tables, risking contamination with polluted or saline water. Seawater pollution was said to already affect Yantai and Tianjin.