Forest makes way for some golf woods
By Jane Chen |
April 9, 2010, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
WOODS that cost millions of yuan to build in the past decade to retrieve the lost water and eroded soil in a north China village have been uprooted and replaced by a golf project.
The shield against gales and stabilizer of the soil in Jiuchenggong Village in Erdos City of north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region was flattened, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday.
The planned standard golf course, including an indoor coaching center and other support facilities, is expected to use 5 million tons of water each year, mostly from underground, on its 467-hectare spread.
Local villagers worry it will drain out the nearby soil, which is already vulnerable to ecological changes.
Due to its location in an arsenic rock zone, the village has witnessed serious ecological damage since the 1960s with up to 90 percent of water and soil lost.
China's water authority launched an ecological-improvement project in 1998 to plant 200 hectares of sea buckthorn in the area in the following 13 years to retrieve the water and soil.
The project has been paying off as villagers told Xinhua water was appearing in once dried-up streams.
The village is listed as one of the prohibited areas for development by the local government in its development plan for this year considering its poor ecological status.
But this did not deter developers.
Erdos Yitong Coal Co Ltd introduced the golf project in the ecological protection zone in 2005, though in the name of a "New Agricultural Project," because the country has banned construction of new golf courses.
Yitong Coal has developed half of the golf project and expects to lay lawns next month.
The course will open to the public in August, according to Yitong Coal's manager, surnamed Qiao.
The area's water authority doesnot have the power to stop thegolf project because it is outside its jurisdiction, according to Chen Yonggui, office dean of the Dongsheng District Water Protection Bureau.
The shield against gales and stabilizer of the soil in Jiuchenggong Village in Erdos City of north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region was flattened, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday.
The planned standard golf course, including an indoor coaching center and other support facilities, is expected to use 5 million tons of water each year, mostly from underground, on its 467-hectare spread.
Local villagers worry it will drain out the nearby soil, which is already vulnerable to ecological changes.
Due to its location in an arsenic rock zone, the village has witnessed serious ecological damage since the 1960s with up to 90 percent of water and soil lost.
China's water authority launched an ecological-improvement project in 1998 to plant 200 hectares of sea buckthorn in the area in the following 13 years to retrieve the water and soil.
The project has been paying off as villagers told Xinhua water was appearing in once dried-up streams.
The village is listed as one of the prohibited areas for development by the local government in its development plan for this year considering its poor ecological status.
But this did not deter developers.
Erdos Yitong Coal Co Ltd introduced the golf project in the ecological protection zone in 2005, though in the name of a "New Agricultural Project," because the country has banned construction of new golf courses.
Yitong Coal has developed half of the golf project and expects to lay lawns next month.
The course will open to the public in August, according to Yitong Coal's manager, surnamed Qiao.
The area's water authority doesnot have the power to stop thegolf project because it is outside its jurisdiction, according to Chen Yonggui, office dean of the Dongsheng District Water Protection Bureau.
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