The past year has been a wasted one for 56-year-old farmer Pan Xiongshun - one of his two plots of land yielded nothing. The disastrous losses, he said, were as much man-made as natural. Crouching, Mr Pan stuck his fingers into 3cm-wide cracks in his dried-up rice field. He said virtually every household in Panjia village, in Lianzhou , northern Guangdong, had suffered similar losses. Panjia sits at the foot of Lingting Mountain, the site of the Tanling Reservoir, which supplies water to most households in Lianzhou. Because of the lack of rain, the reservoir's water volume has fallen by 60 per cent to about 27 million cubic metres. The drought would not normally hit the farmers in Panjia directly because they have relied on mountain streams to farm their land for generations. However, the situation began to change this year when a small hydroelectric power station was built on the mountain, trapping the water that flowed from most streams. 'There has been no rain for months, and the power station is holding all the water,' Mr Pan said. 'Now we have no water for irrigation. 'Man-made calamity plays a bigger role than nature in my losses.' Such grievances are widely shared. Huang Lusheng , 78, who lives in Xinchun village, said he had lost a lot because of the lack of irrigation. Pulling stunted radishes from his field, Mr Huang said there was no way he could sell his harvest and he would have to use it to feed the pigs he breeds. Another Panjia villager, Pan Guangming , 53, said: 'The hydropower station has made money ... and we are suffering losses. 'Everyone in the village feels resentful and disappointed about the power station. But we have no one to complain to because the township officials are on good terms with those who run the power station.'
