Water shortages in most of the cities in north China are expected to be eliminated by 2010, when part of the project to divert water from the Yangtze River is completed, Vice-Minister of Water Resources Chen Lei told a national conference on water resources programming Wednesday in Hefei.

Chen said the east route and the first phase of the central route would be completed and operational by 2010. In addition to supplying urban needs, they will provide enough drinking water for rural people across the region.

Flood-prevention measures, including reinforcing key dams and improving reservoir flood storage capacity, will be taken in the next few years to ensure that key cities and regions will not be threatened by floods, Chen said.

Before 2010, more projects will be launched in order to save water and prevent soil erosion, he added.

The project to divert water from the Yangtze River to China's drought-ridden northern areas is a mammoth water conservancy scheme, larger even than the Three Gorges Project.

The tab for the project is expected to come to more than 486 billion yuan (US$59 billion), twice the cost of the Three Gorges Project. Once completed, up to 44.8 billion cubic meters of water--about the average annual volume of the Yellow River--will be diverted through three canals to the north.

The acute water shortages in the valleys of the Yellow, Huaihe and Haihe rivers, which are the location of more than one-third of the country's farmland, grain output, population and gross domestic output, will be significantly alleviated.

(People's Daily February 18, 2004)