North China's Hebei Province is suffering from a drought with more than 530,000 hectares of farmland affected, the provincial department of water resources said on Saturday. 

 

The precipitation that Hebei received in August was 39 percent less than the normal level. Zhangjiakou and Chengde cities are the worst-hit areas, the department said in a report.

 

In Kangbao county of Zhangjiakou, 88 percent of all the county's 100,000 hectares of farmland saw a total crop failure due to the drought, and 20,000 hectares of saplings were also affected, the report said.

 

The drought in Zhangjiakou and Chengde has also reduced the runoff in rivers, which provide water for Beijing and Tianjin on the lower reaches.

 

The runoff at the headwaters of the Shandian River, a tributary of the Luanhe River that Tianjin relies on for drinking water, has been 0.2 cubic meter per second for the past 40 days, down from the normal level of 0.5 cubic meter per second.

 

The Shandian River dried up in Inner Mongolia before flowing into Luanhe.

 

(Xinhua News Agency September 3, 2007)