Beyond Pollution, Fake Snow Is Another Issue
When athletes take to Zhangjiakou’s ski slopes next month, they’ll be competing in the first-ever Olympic Games to rely completely on artificial snow. That’s according to a Bloomberg report released last week, which estimated China could use up as much as 2 million cubic meters of water to create enough artificial snow to complete the skiing and snowboarding events. (The 2014 games in Sochi also relied heavily on fake snow as did the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang.)
All that water use could put a strain on a region already dealing with scarcity issues. In a statement late last year, a spokesperson for the Beijing Winter Olympics said nearly 10% of the water used in one Zhangjiakou district would be used solely to create artificial snow. Though China has deployed 11 water tanks near the slopes to collect water from runoff, rain, and melted snow to lower the burden, environmental groups like Hong Kong-based China Water Risk worry it’s not enough.
