A water scarcity crisis is expanding from the north of the country to the south, with major lakes along the Yangtze river drying up, state media reports.
And even at lakes and rivers that are not drying up, pollution means the water is often unusable, according to Xinhua.
It was no longer surprising to see parts of Poyang lake – the country’s largest fresh water lake – become grassland during winter due to overexploitation of water resources upstream, an official in Jiangxi (江西) province said.
The lake had become so dry that local authorities needed to warn people about fire prevention in the newly created grassland, the report said.
The situation was similar at Dongting lake, in Hunan (湖南) province, where inflows of water from the Yangtze have dropped more than 40 per cent, according to provincial statistics.
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The drying up of the two lakes has led to the disappearance of nesting grounds for birds and spawning grounds for fish.
