Saturday's downpour in Beijing, which caught the Chinese media's attention, has clarified the different types of challenges that are confronting city authorities.

The thunderstorm, starting in the afternoon and lasting for three hours, dropped an average of 23 millimetres of rain on the national capital.

For a city crying out for water, the precipitation turned out to be a bust rather than a blessing.

Five houses collapsed, 59 trees were toppled and 4,698 houses were left with leaks. Worst of all, traffic was at a standstill for hours in the city's downtown area because the drainage system could not get rid of the rainwater quickly enough.

The cloudburst, though unexpected, should not have thrown the city into such a fix. Ironically, the rain exposed the city's Achilles heel.

While a city's response to any emergency is a test for the municipal authorities concerned, Beijing and China's other big cities are yet to review planning concepts so they can create a more sustainable environment for residents.

It is known to all that Beijing has been plagued by a shortage of water for years. In a drive to address the problem, the city has been taking every measure possible to increase water supplies, including the widespread - but unproven - use of rain enhancement technology.

Beijing has had more rain since April than in previous years. The enhancement technology, such as cloud seeding, has been used to prompt almost every drop of rain that has fallen on Beijing or northern China this year.

However, Beijing simply lets the water flow to waste or, worse still, wreak havoc on its infrastructure.

The demand for water is increasing full tilt along with the nation's rapid population boom and economic progress.

In June, the government announced a 48.8 billion yuan (US$5.9 billions) nine-bank loan agreement to help pay for the 136 billion yuan (US$16 billion) South-North Water Diversion project, which will carry water from the Yangtze River basin to Beijing and the north. To help pay for the project, Beijing will raise water prices by 20 per cent in 2005, a further increase after several price hikes over the last few years.

The shortage of water is also presenting us with new issues. The governments of five cities in Central China's Henan Province have been attempting to induce the clouds that pass above their municipalities by shooting chemicals into them. The cities compete for the clouds and use technology to group them together, in the hope that they will burst above them.

The competition highlights the need to create regulations for the management of new resources, such as clouds.

It is not clear whether there are any negative side-effects from inducing rainfall. But one thing is for sure - it is high time to think seriously about exploiting the weather to our benefit.

Managing resources more scientifically and rationally will, perhaps, serve us all better than competing for limited reserves.

In the meantime, our policy-makers need to look at city planning to make better use of what we have. Enditem

(China Daily)