(ATR) Construction at the Zhangjiakou cluster for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics has restarted.
According to Chinese state-run news outlet Xinhua, construction restarted in the venue cluster as the weather has once again become cooperative in the region.
Zhangjiakou will host events from eight sports and is one of three competition clusters for Beijing 2022. Ice events will be held in Beijing, while some other alpine events will be held in Yanqing. An ambitious high speed rail project is being constructed to cut travel time between Beijing and Zhangjiakou down to less than one hour.
Xinhua reported that 10 new projects are being started this May, out of the total of 28 that will be done in the cluster. The Zhangjiakou Olympic Village, Nordic and biathlon center, and Genting Snow Park are part of the latest works. Other works include road construction, and other infrastructure needs, according to the reports.
The Zhangjiakou construction is expected to be completed in 2019.
The report says that "environmental protection measures" are being taken in all construction projects. Beijing’s initial bid and the subsequent project for the 2022 Olympics have come under fire from environmental activists, because of the lack of natural snow around Games’ alpine venues.
At PyeongChang 2018, bid organizers reaffirmed commitment to environmental practices, without offering much detail. When asked on multiple occasions about the environmental issue of the water supply for the snowmakers at the ski venues, Beijing 2022 director of media and communications Chang Yu sidestepped any specifics about where the water would be coming from in a region that doesn’t have a lot of it.
"For the Zhangjiakou and Yanqing areas we already did a lot of environmental impact assessments which is required by the Chinese law," Chang said, simply adding "We have enough resources for water."
Written by Aaron Bauer and Gerard Farek
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