The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is funding a 11-year project to provide safe drinking water to low- income residents in a southwestern Chinese city.

The ADB said in a press release received Friday that its Board of Directors has approved the 150 million U.S. dollar loan for the Guiyang Integrated Water Resources Management (Sector) Project.

"The project will provide extensive water resource benefits to about 1.6 million residents, or 45 percent of the total population of Guiyang Municipality, with about 240,000 poor rural dwellers getting access to safe drinking water," said Zhang Qingfeng, Senior Water Resources Engineer in ADB's East Asia Department.

To improve urban water supply, reservoirs, dams, transmission pipelines, and a treatment plant will be built. In rural areas, over 40 small reservoirs will be established, dilapidated irrigation systems will be restored, and tree planting will be carried out on sloping land. At the farm level, over 100,000 small water storage tanks will be built to collect spring and rainwater.

Guiyang lies in a mountainous region separating the Yangtze and Pearl River Basins. It has the lowest level of urban income of any province, and the second lowest rural income in the country, and while it gets ample rainfall it lacks the means to capture, store and distribute that water efficiently, the ADB said.