This is Kunming's third straight year of drought. I have heard rumors from reliable Chinese friends that water rationing will start at the end of this month. Does anyone have details or know how it will work?

news.kunming.cn/km-news/content/2012-02/23/content_2850984.htm

The water company has started reducing water pressure in the system, but they will do their best to give water between 4 - 8pm.

People who are living higher up will be most effected. So for people who live near Hong Shan, Yuan Tong Shan, water restrictions have already started,,,we were without water during the morning, but it came back after 2..

Thanks for the info and the link.

With all this news about water rationing and shortages, I get really puzzled when I see the gardeners at our apartment complex watering the lawn. It seems like such a waste.

@AlPage48, depending on the where you are, the water being used to water the lawn is probably untreated reclaimed waste water, or so I am told. I know for a fact that at the university I work at, sometimes they even use sewage water, i.e. the poo water from the student dormitories to "fertilize" the grass.

Food for thought...

Cheers~

My neighbourhood (up a hill near XueFu Lu) has been without running water for 3 weeks now. So far they have maintained a trickle for half an hour around 6ish (buckets fly, I tell you!) but we've been told this will continue "until the rains come". I've met a few other folk living elsewhere in the city who said they've had short, sporadic cuts too. Somehow I'm happier washing from a bucket if I know others are sharing the burden.

Sounds like serious business all right. I live in an old building near the corner of 换成东路 and 人民东路 and we haven't had any noticeable restriction yet. But this afternoon I saw an announcement posted near the gate that had to do with water. I will photograph it later and try to translate enough to figure out the gist of it. My Chinese is not good enough to read it on the fly.

Just found a news report right here on GoKunming:

www.gokunming.com/[...]

My neighbourhood (up a hill near XueFu Lu) is still without regular running water some 4 months after we first had it rationed. We're getting 30 minutes every other day at the moment. However, I don't detect much water rationing when I visit other areas of the city. I wondered if any of you are suffering too?

On the 7th floor near Xiaoximen we used to have water only from about 5pm to 8am since right after Chunjie (when the water pressure was first lowered), but since the end of May this has been reduced to about 6pm to 9pm, which sucks significantly more. Intermittently there were days when the water did not come back in the evening.

Our flat is affected because it is neither low enough to not be affected by the lowered pressure, nor high enough to have a pumping/storage system. We do have a pump, but now the pressure is too low for the pump to operate. Many households in Kunming are either low enough or are part of a compound with intermediate water storage and I would assume that they have done little to reduce their water consumption.

I do not expect the situation to improve in the medium future: It will take a very rainy season to fill entirely empty reservoirs, so any decision to raise water pressure again is unlikely to be taken before October or even next April when they know how dry the dry season was. And then with KM growing as it is the demand for water is constantly increasing with few new sources available in the short term.

Just having water from the evening to the morning was inconvenient, but doable. Just three hours of water is significantly more painful. However, with water just a few minutes every other day, I would just move.

I just had a look at the dam in Songming which supplies water to Songming city,,no visible increase in the water level in two weeks despite fairly heavy rain,,,bit of a worry