A top water official in the capital has denied Beijing plans to divert water from neighbouring provinces to quench the city's thirst ahead of and during the Olympics. Beijing Water Authority deputy head Bi Xiaogang also dismissed widespread concerns that the hosting of the Games would aggravate the capital's water shortage. 'As for questions about whether the Olympics would increase water consumption by a large amount or worsen the city's water environment and exacerbate demand-supply constraints, my answer is no, because the amount of water used by the Olympics will be rather limited,' he said yesterday at a briefing. He went on to deny a widely circulated plan to rely on arid Hebei and Shanxi provinces to tackle a chronic water shortage problem in Beijing during the Games. 'With the Olympics just days ahead, I can say in a responsible manner that we don't have plans to divert water from neighbouring areas to meet the capital's demand,' Mr Bi said. Mr Bi and other local officials have been quoted many times in the past by state media as saying that Beijing would divert up to 400 million cubic metres of water from Hebei for the Games. Beijing's water consumption for last year was 3.48 billion cubic metres. Water-diversion facilities have already been built to pump water from four reservoirs in Hebei. Farmers from more than 200 villages near the reservoirs had been forced to turn their rice paddies into cornfields since last year to save more water for the capital, according to The Beijing News. The water-diversion proposal was described in a report released last month by Canadian environmental group Probe International as like 'trying to quench thirst by drinking poison'. The report also criticised Beijing's tapping of karst groundwater supplies 1km or deeper below the surface, which further strained underground sources. But Mr Bi said that the capital had rich groundwater resources and its use of deep groundwater was 'moderate and under strict control'. However, the official did not say how drought-stricken Beijing was suddenly able to cope with the demand for water because of the Olympics without the diversion project.