A key state project to collect rainwater for soldiers and people living on Yongxing Island of the Xisha Archipelago in the South China Sea has passed official appraisal after a half year's trial run.
With the project now in operation, gone are the days when local people had to rely on water shipped by vessels.
For decades, the soldiers and villagers, under frequent threat of subtropical storms and cold fronts, faced the problems of irregular water and vegetable supplies and poor communications facilities.
In September 1998, the Ministry of Water Conservancy and the General Logistics Department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army launched a 65-million-yuan project to build water gathering facility on Yongxing Island.
The project was been built on the basis of an existing rainwater purification project.
Four water tanks, each with a capacity of 5,000 cubic meters, now have been constructed with a total gathering and processing capacity of 140,000 tons of water a year.
