Beijing will focus efforts on developing local water resources
and diverting water from elsewhere to ease its shortage of water
supply, and will ultimately solve the severe problem by 2010, said
Bi Xiaogang, vice director of the Beijing municipal water resources
bureau, on Tuesday.
A project to develop water resources at Huairou on Beijing's
outskirts has been completed and begun to supply 330,000 cubic
meters of water to Beijing. Construction on a similar project at
Pinggu, also on the outskirts, is expected to kick off at the end
of October and to begin operation in July 2004.
The two projects are expected to supply a combined 240 million
cubic meters of water to Beijing annually, said Bi.
By 2007, 200 million to 300 million cubic meters of water will
be diverted from neighboring Hebei Province to Beijing.
In addition, Beijing could use water diverted from the Yellow
River by 2008 and that from the Yangtze River by 2010.
Beijing has been facing a severe shortage of water supply, a
situation which has deteriorated with five consecutive years of
drought since 1999.
There are now only 4.1 billion cubic meters of water available
for use by local residents, with volume available for per capita
less than 300 cubic meters.
(Xinhua News Agency October 22, 2003)