Southern comfort for thirsty northern folk
Print Edition
About 5 million Beijing residents are now drinking water from a tributary of the Yangtze River, two months after a key section of China’s massive south-to-north water diversion project was put into operation.
Beijing has received more than 50 million cubic meters of water from the south since December 12, when water began to be routed from the central Chinese province of Hubei to the capital, the Beijing south-to-north water diversion office said yesterday.
The first stage of this middle route — one of three routes involved in the project — starts at Hubei’s Danjiangkou Reservoir, which stores water from the Hanjiang River, a tributary of the Yangtze.
A 1,432 kilometer canal brings the water to China’s thirsty northern regions, including the cities of Beijing and Tianjin, and the provinces of Henan and Hebei.
Two out of the six water plants in Beijing are using the “southern water” as their sole source. The other plants are mixing the southern water with domestic water.
Beijing is expected to double its daily consumption of the southern water to 1.7 million cubic meters by the end of May. The city is projected to consume 818 million cubic meters of water, nearly a quarter of its annual consumption, from the south by the end of October.
With a population of over 20 million, Beijing consumes 3.6 billion cubic meters of water a year, but its water resources per capita are only an 80th of the world average.
The capital’s water supply previously relied heavily on groundwater, but its high calcium and magnesium content clogged showerheads and stiffened laundry.
China’s south-to-north water diversion project, the world’s largest such scheme, is designed to take water from the country’s longest river, the Yangtze, through eastern, middle and western routes to supply dry areas in the north.
It was officially approved by the State Council in 2002, 50 years after late Chinese leader Mao Zedong came up with the idea.
The project, costing an estimated 500 billion yuan (US$80 billion), started with the construction of the eastern route in 2002 and the middle route in 2003.
The western route, which requires more sophisticated technology, is still in the research stage.
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