A record 3.5 billion yuan (US$420 million) is expected to be poured
into China's massive consolidation of aged and dangerous reservoirs
by 2005 to improve the national flood-control and drought-defense
system.
The investment will subsidize water authorities' repair of 1,460
dangerous reservoirs and the upgrading of their flood-control and
drought-alleviation capabilities.
Of
the reservoirs, 145 are large and 584 are medium-sized, said Wang
Shucheng, minister of water resources, in his latest report on the
issue.
Wang's ministry completed repair of some 200 dangerous reservoirs
between 1998 and 2000, with strong financial support from the
State.
However, the latest survey by the ministry found there are still
30,413 reservoirs with problems, such as worsening seepage and dams
in danger of collapsing because of ageing or substandard
design.
The ministry has worked out countermeasures aimed at speeding up
the repair of dangerous reservoirs in a bid to eliminate such "time
bombs," as some experts have described them.
Under the repair plan, the ministry is urging local authorities to
reinforce or rebuild as soon as possible any dams at key reservoirs
that show any danger of collapsing.
Officials with the ministry said they hope related authorities will
give top investment priority to reservoir reinforcement
projects.
They estimated about 33 billion yuan (US$3.9 billion) will be
needed to reinforce all of the dangerous reservoirs, including more
than 100 large-scale ones with designed storage capacities of at
least 100 million cubic meters of water, and more than 800
medium-sized and 32,000 small ones.
With the acceleration of repairs, all of the substandard reservoirs
are scheduled to be upgraded to State-set safety standards by
2010.
The economic benefits to be realized by that time are expected to
be tremendous, including a 13 billion-cubic-meter flood-control
storage capacity, 11 billion cubic meters of water for hydropower,
17 billion cubic meters for general consumption and the irrigation
of 2 million hectares of farmland.
China has decided to inject more than 400 billion yuan (US$48
billion) into water conservation projects during the next five
years.
Ministry sources said priority for investment will be given to
reinforcing the key levees of China's major flood-prone rivers,
such as the Yangtze and the Yellow rivers, to renovating large
reservoirs with potential problems throughout the country and to
improving western China's fragile ecosystems, particularly chronic
water and soil erosion - the root cause of poverty for millions of
rural people.
(China
Daily February 21, 2002)