A man pumps drinking water from a 200-meter-deep well, the only one remaining in Dongming village, near the Dongming open-cast coal mine, Hulun Buir city, Inner Mongolia. Huge amounts of ground water are pumped out as a precursor to mining.
Ten billion cubic meters of water will be consumed by 16 new coal fired power plants and mines in China in 2015, triggering severe water crises in the country’s arid Northwest.