Chapter 83 Touched
Zhuang Zheng couldn't believe it, and stared at Lu Hanbin with only his exposed eyes.

A few days ago, he had read information about the Hongyashan Reservoir in the county. The reservoir is located between two large deserts and is known as "Asia's No. 1 Desert Reservoir."

"The reservoir is so big, there must be water!"

Lu Hanbin shook his head and said teasingly, "Manager Zhuang has been busy reading documents in the office recently."

Zhuang Zheng nodded. It was a rare opportunity to get along with the boss, so he naturally wanted to show more of his value.

“What is the current situation of Hongyashan Reservoir?”

"I heard from locals that it's terrible, but you have to go there to know the details."

"Then the next stop is Hongyashan Reservoir." Guo Yang made the decision.

Lu Hanbin squatted down, grabbed a handful of sand with both hands and spread it out. It was a handful of gray-brown soil with a faint white glow.

The soil had no moisture or viscosity, and it kept sliding through my fingers.

A dry and cold wind blew, and the dust floated away into the distance.

There was a strange light in Lu Hanbin's eyes. He also wanted to see what this place looked like originally.

The reeds by the water are as tall as a house, and in spring yellow flowers bloom all over the lake bank. When you get close, swans, geese and wild ducks will take off.

"Let's go!"

Camel bells rang.

The few people did not choose to return by the same route, but walked forward. After climbing over one sand dune after another, they seemed to have arrived at the heart of Qingtu Lake.

The shells and dead fish remains all over the ground prove that this was once a place with endless blue waters.

After walking a little further, we saw signs of a village, with camels lined up in a long line crossing the village.

Abandoned houses can be seen everywhere. All usable materials on the roofs have been removed, leaving only the four walls made of loess.

The wind and sand eroded the earthen walls all the time, and they became shorter and shorter every year until they became part of the land.

Guo Shan couldn't help but say: "Every local can feel the footsteps of the desert. Maybe the place you walked on a few months ago was still flat land, but a few months later, sand dunes have occupied this place. Seeing your land and house being eroded by the desert bit by bit is like seeing your own children being bullied."

The atmosphere was a bit heavy, and Zhuang Zheng and Lu Hanbin were a little numb.

Zhang Jing was like a machine, holding the camera steadily in his hand, recording the depressed, decayed and dead scene of the lake area.

Guo Yang turned to his eldest brother and said, "The desert is attacking, and we are on the defensive. Wind walls, grass barriers and other methods of sand control are only stopgap measures. If we want to cure this place completely, we still need water."

Where should the water come from?

Not long after passing the village, we came to another abandoned village.

The same passing through.

In a yard where there were still some straw stalks left in a corner, a few sheep were bleating, and it was unclear whether they were welcoming these uninvited guests.

An old man with bronze skin walked out of the loess house next to the yard.

The old man was holding a worn porcelain bowl with two steamed buns and boiling water in it. He looked at the visitor with his cloudy eyes with melancholy.

Guo Yang took the lead and got off the camel.

"Uncle, is there anyone else in the village?"

"No, my neighbor also went to live with relatives in Inner Mongolia last year." The old man's tone revealed loneliness.

"Why don't you move, old man?"

"We'll move after we sell the sheep." The old man pointed to the eight sheep in the sheepfold. In this area where the annual income is only a few hundred yuan, those might be his only hope this year.

After a while.

Guo Shan smiled for the first time in a long time and drove the eight sheep forward.

Minqin’s mutton is a specialty, but what made Guo Shan happy was his younger brother’s behavior.

He could see that buying the old man's sheep was an act from the heart, and was more sincere than when he asked the people in the community to move to the Changning Township immigration settlement.

Outside the village, there is desert again.

When we reached the village on the edge of the desert, the smell of fireworks became stronger, but the scene was so touching that it made people cry.

The bus with the name of the ecological immigrants arrived. The women and children walked to the door crying and shouting. The men still knelt in front of the graves and kowtowed to their parents and ancestors for the last time. Others who did not get on the bus took tractors or even donkey carts to the unknown.

It is difficult for people who have not experienced it to imagine the pain of leaving their hometown.

Zhang Jing had already stepped forward and pointed the camera at the crowd waiting in line for the bus, but there were also tears in his eyes.

Since traveling through time, Guo Yang has been like an emotionless machine, with no special feelings towards Minqin or Yuhe Village.

This is the original owner's hometown, not his hometown.

But at this moment, the emotions were like an overturned seasoning bottle, with all kinds of mixed feelings.

Guo Shan moved the sheep back to Yuhe Village and kept them in the animal pen in the yard of his hometown. He sold some and killed some.

Zhuang Zheng was like a curious baby, wandering around the house, looking for clues, and then flattering others in a subtle way.

Lu Hanbin asked: "How do the villagers get water?"

"We go to the villages with water to buy it. For example, our community has to drive donkey carts to Dongzhen, 10 kilometers away, to fetch water once a week in winter and once every two or three days in summer."

"Oh."

"Buying water is too expensive. There is another way to consume water."

Guo Shan led a few people to a place at the entrance of the village and said, "This is a flood pond."

This is a small pond dug out on the open ground. In the center of the pond, another pit was dug, which is about four or five meters deep.

Zhang Jing frowned, the camera pointed at a pool of turbid green water in the pit, with grass leaves and foam floating on the surface. He couldn't help but think of the clean tap water in the county.

“What kind of water does the county drink?”

"Groundwater." Lu Hanbin remembered the data he saw at the county water conservancy bureau before coming here.

On the premise of maintaining the ecology, Minqin can extract 1.2 million cubic meters of groundwater each year. Now the net over-exploitation is 3 million cubic meters per year, and the groundwater level is declining at a rate of 0.3-0.8 meters per year.

The excessive exploitation of groundwater has led to a sharp deterioration of the ecology.

Without the source of life, no matter how strong the plant is, it cannot survive.

The first to disappear was the Populus euphratica, which was known as a plant that lived for 300 years. Then the Elaeagnus angustifolia withered and the Tamarix tamarisk died.

What is most heartbreaking is the disappearance of Chai Wan.

Chai Wan is not a plant, but a community, equivalent to the green belt of the city. The plant community was planted on the edge of the farmland and was once the best tool for preventing wind and fixing sand.

Now you can only see the green Chai Wan of the past in the expansion pack.

But extracting groundwater is also a helpless move. The water is blocked by the reservoir upstream. In order to survive, the people of Minqin have to dig wells and springs and live beyond their means.

……

I went back to the county town to rest for a day and looked up some information in the county town.

Everyone has lost hope for the Hongyashan Reservoir.

Zhuang Zheng said to Lu Hanbin, "Didn't they say that there was sand and dust accumulation? Why is the water pollution still so serious?"

Lu Hanbin pursed his lips and pointed to the director's office of the Water Conservancy Bureau. "Go ask yourself."

Zhuang Zheng rolled his eyes at him and walked straight into the director's office.

After some communication, Zhuang Zheng's only hope disappeared without a trace, and the plan to divert water from the Hongyashan Reservoir was basically a failure.

Restoring Qingtu Lake seems to be empty talk.

In fact, since last year, the Hongyashan Reservoir has stopped supplying water to the Minqin Lake area.

The reason is a series of water pollution incidents that have caused public outrage.

According to the water quality test in April last year, the water quality of Hongyashan Reservoir was Class V, which is heavily polluted and has basically lost its usable function.

In 2002, the amount of waste water discharged directly from the upper reaches into the Shiyang River Basin reached 3000 million tons.

Nearly one-third of the upstream water received by Hongyashan Reservoir every year is waste water.

(End of this chapter)