Olympic rowing course run dry
An interesting thread on the rec.sport.rowing messageboards here. The Olympic rowing venue in Beijing has run dry due to drought. The Beijing authorities are going to divert another river to replenish it. The course is in the arid, urban region Shunyi of Beijing so natural run-off to replenish the it is practically non-existent. This is bad planning that could have been caught from the start, but neither the IOC nor the Beijing committee have done anything. So for the rowers going to Beijing, not only are the already going to have to deal with breathing difficulties from the massive pollution, but now also their going to have to compete on the dreaded ergs!
For London 2012, the rowers at least already have their course built away from the pollution and problems of the main site, but already the Canoe/Slalom course at Broxbourne is under threat from the previous pollution of the area.
I’m a big fan of the Olympics and really want London 2012 to succeed. But for future games, the IOC and the planning committees have to make the impact the games has on the area a number one priority - not all legacy is good.
The rowing venue has not run dry and the diverted water is explicitly not being used for the venue itself (check the real press reports).
Some water from the Wenyu River is being piped to the Chaobai River near the Olympic venue because of over-use of water in the latter river. This is not uncommon anywhere in the world (check the state of the Rio Grande in Texas, for example).
So it’s nothing to do with bad planning at all. And nothing to do with the venue itself. One can certainly question the value of a 14km pipeline to move water for landscaping reasons - a real story in itself - but disingenuous to portray it as an Olympic issue.
And Shunyi is certainly not arid - far from it.
Why is FISA reporting it as having run dry and having diverted the river to refill then? You may be right (you certainly seem to know a lot about it) but strange that the official body is reporting it.