Web Exclusive

Construction on water diversion project to accelerate

By Liang Chao (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-12-28 14:29

ZHENGZHOU: After years of delay, construction on the South-to-North Water Diversion Project will, for the first time since it began years ago, proceed at full capacity next year, thanks to an unprecedented investment boom, according to Zhang Jiyao, the official in charge of the program under the State Council.

Zhang said at a conference on Monday, December 28, that a record 48 billion yuan ($7.02 billion) will be pumped into the project in 2010 in order to launch 70 new subsidiary projects that had not yet been started.

Most of the investment will come from the government funds for the State key water projects, and bank loans. 72 percent of the total is earmarked for the relocation of the affected locals and the land requisition, according to experts with Zhang’s office.

“The scale of the investment would be equal to the total amount from the previous seven years,” Zhang said. “Up to 141,000 rural residents or over 42 percent of the total relocation will begin to make way for the construction to be begin along the central route of the gigantic project.”

61,000 of the relocated residents will be in Henan province, one of the key beneficiaries of the route, and roughly 80,000 others are in Hubei province, near the Danjiangkou reservoir, on the Hanjiang, the largest tributary of the Yangtze River. Danjiangkou will be a key source of water for the diversion project.

The resettlement is the largest attempted since construction began on the central route years ago with projects that included heightening the dam of the reservoir to hold water that will be transferred to parts of northern China, including Hebei province, Tianjin and Beijing, which have been suffering from droughts for over a decade.

"China’s proactive fiscal policy and moderately loose monetary policy has laid a foundation for us to step up the construction on these major projects,” Zhang told local officials in charge of the program in seven related provinces including Jiangsu, Shandong and Henan.

Zhang also said that priority must be given to environmental protection in order to ensure that only clean water be diverted northward. Displaced people must also be resettled properly, he said. The success of the project depends on these two factors, Zhang emphasized.

The South-to-North Water Diversion Project is designed to move water from the relatively humid south to China’s drier northern regions, which have long suffered from water shortages. It will connect the Yangtze, Huaihe, Yellow, and Haihe rivers through three main canals – an eastern canal, a central canal, and a western canal. The project will take between 40 and 50 years to finish.