Water diversion project brings many benefits

Relief provided for eastern areas long plagued by drought

The sun shone brightly as my father carried water from a small pond in a metal bucket, scrambling to fill a makeshift tank on our tractor bed.

After days of scorching temperatures, the pond was one of the few water bodies in our village that still had supplies, but the water level was low. This meant my father had to walk a long way on a slippery slope to reach the water.

As it was so hot, he removed his shirt, and sweat streamed down his face. His shoulders and part of his back were sunburned.

At that time in the mid-1990s, I was just a young boy, and although I was there to help, I cannot recall exactly what I did.

This childhood memory suddenly returned to me this month as I stood in a control center for the eastern route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project.

Mo Zhaoxiang, head of the information center at Jiangsu Water Source Co in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province, said that with a simple click of a computer mouse, water pumps up to 400 kilometers away will start operating in just five seconds.

Pumping stations in Jiangsu along the route can deliver 100 cubic meters of water per second all the way to the north.

I was on an interview tour ahead of the 10th anniversary of the eastern route starting operation on Nov 15, 2013.

Water is drawn for this route from the lower reaches of the Yangtze River at Jiangdu in Yangzhou city, Jiangsu. The ancient Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and its parallel rivers are used to divert water to northern China through a series of pumping stations.