China's huge south-to-north water diversion project entered a
crucial stage on Monday as the dam heightening project at
Danjiangkou Reservoir in central China got underway.
The height of the dam will be raised by 15 meters to 175 meters
over five years, which is a key project to ensure the effective
diversion of 20 billion cubic meters of water to the arid northern
and northwestern parts of the country by 2010, according to Ning
Yuan, deputy director of the South-North Water Diversion Project
Office of the State Council.
The Danjiangkou Reservoir was built in 1958, and is the center
of the massive south-to-north water diversion project. It was put
into operation in 1973.
When the dam works are completed, the reservoir will have a
bigger storage capacity -- enlarged by 11.6 billion cubic meters --
and a larger land area -- expanded from 745 sq km to 1,050 sq km,
Ning said.
Water will be diverted from the upper, middle and lower reaches
of the Yangtze River to the northern and northwestern parts of
China through western, central and eastern routes. Construction of
the eastern and central routes began in 2002 and 2003
respectively.
Between 2002 and 2010, some 20 billion cubic meters of water
will be diverted from south to north, about 9.5 billion cubic
meters from the Danjiangkou Reservoir.
In about 40 to 50 years, 44.8 billion cubic meters of water will
be diverted, which is equal to the total water volume of the Yellow
River, the country's second largest river.
According to Ning, the dam project should be completed by 2010.
By then, water will be diverted through a 1,420-km-long trunk canal
to moisten and irrigate the arid northern lands.
When the entire project is completed, about a dozen provinces,
municipalities and autonomous regions in north China including
Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Qinghai, Gansu, Ningxia,
Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi and Shanxi -- or about 300 million people
-- will benefit from it.
These areas produce one third of the country's grain output and
gross domestic product, but operate on merely a fifth of the
country's average per capita water resources.
The project, estimated to cost a total of 486 billion yuan
(US$60 billion), will have a far-reaching impact on the sustainable
development of the country, and benefit generations of Chinese to
come, Wu Xinmu, an economist and professor with Wuhan University,
said.
China is short of water resources in general, Wu said, with
average per capita access to water resources accounting for merely
a quarter of the world's average.
The distribution of water resources is uneven throughout the
country. It is rich in the south and deficient in the north.
The proposal for a water diversion project was first put forward
by the late Chairman Mao Zedong in 1952.
(Xinhua News Agency September 27, 2005)
