Water from Hebei quenches Beijing thirst

By Liang Chao (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-09-28 11:36

As officials lifted sluices in a canal of the Beijuma, a boundary river between Beijing and its neighboring Hebei province, up to 300 million cubic of water began to gush out towards Beijing via a 307.5-km-long canal connected with three reservoirs of Hebei as of 10 am on September 28.

From now on, the Shijiazhuang-Beijing emergency water diversion project, or part of the South-to-North water diversion project is now officially in operation and has begun alleviating the water scarcity in Beijing, Zhang Jiyao, top official in charge of the country's largest water diversion project, announced at a ceremony celebrating the event.

It took over four years and four months for thousands of workers to build the 307-km canal. And, it takes six months for the water to flow into Beijing via 12 cities and counties from its neighboring province.

After running through Fangshan, Fengtai and Haidian districts in Beijing, the fresh water will finally reach Tuancheng, a man-made lake at the Summer Palace in northern Beijing and then merge into the capital city's mainstream water supply. After such a long journey, the quality of the water from the three reservoirs is still at grade-III, the State's standards for drinking water, confirmed experts with the Beijing Water Authority.

People in Beijing will be able to use the long-awaited fresh water after suffering decades of water shortages caused by consecutive droughts since 1997 when the local ground water table kept subsiding because of excessive use of ground water.

The Shijiazhuang-Beijing canal is the northern end of the middle route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, the most ambitious one of its type China has ever planned in history.

The South-to-North Water Diversion Project, consisting of the eastern, middle and western routes, is designed to divert water from the water-rich south of the country, mainly the Yangtze River, the country's longest, to the dry north.

Both of the eastern and middle routes are already under construction. The western route, meant to replenish the Yellow River with water diverted from the upper reaches of the Yangtze River by creating huge tunnels in the high mountains of western China, is still at the blueprint stage.

According to the South-to-North Water Diversion Office, when part of the middle route is completed in 2010, about 1 billion cubic meters of clean water is expected to be diverted to Beijing annually to largely ease up its chronic water supply shortages.