The middle-route construction of China's ambitious south-to-north water diversion project will start this year, the Beijing Morning Post reports on Friday.
Pipeline will be laid simultaneously at the middle-route project's starting point of Danjiangkou City in central China and its ending point of Beijing.
In the Chinese capital, an 80-kilometer underground pipeline will be laid, at a cost of 10 billion yuan (about US$1.2 billion).
If thing goes smoothly, Beijingers will be able to drink the water of the Yangtze River in 2007.
When the pipeline is put into use, 1.2 billion cubic meters of fresh water will be channeled annually to the city. Then, the rivers and lakes in Beijing will no more give off unbearable stink.
With an estimated cost of 100 billion yuan (about US$12 billion), the south-to-north water diversion project will have three water diversion routes, namely the east route, middle route and west route. It will divert water from the Yangtze River Valleys to the North China Plain, which is subject to drought.
Once the project is completed in five to ten years, some 38 billion to 48 billion cubic meters of water will be transferred yearly to north China.
(People?s Daily February 9, 2002)
