Backgrounder: China's south-to-north water diversion project
BEIJING, Aug. 14 (Xinhuanet) -- China's water diversion project, to bring
relief to China's drought-ridden north by diverting waterfrom the Yangtze River,
is another mammoth water conservancy scheme, larger even than the Three Gorges
The massive project is expected to require investment of about 486 billion
yuan (about 59 billion US dollars), twice as much as the cost of the Three
Gorges Dam project.
Once the project is completed, up to 44.8 billion cubic meters of water
will be diverted through three canals to the north, aboutthe annual volume of
all the water in the Yellow River in normal years.
The acute water shortages in the valleys of the Yellow, Huaihe and Haihe
Rivers, which are home to more than one-third of the country's farmland, grain
output, population and gross domestic output, will be significantly alleviated.
The scheme has taken 50 years of planning to get to this starting point,
and the project is expected to take another 50 years to be completed.
In the 1950s, the late chairman Mao Zedong who was also the founder of the
People's Republic of China, proposed for the first time the idea of bringing
water from the country's south to the north.
After 50 years of research and discussion, the overall program for the
water transfer project was approved in principle by the State Council on August
According to the program, China will build three canals, all more than
1,000 km in length, to act as the eastern, central and western diversion
The three diversion lines will link together four of China's seven major
rivers, namely the Yangtze, Yellow, Huaihe and Haihe rivers.
The northern part of the 1,789 km Hangzhou-Beijing Grand Canal,built 1,400
years ago, will constitute the main body of the eastern canal, which has been
under construction since last year.
Work on the central canal, starting from Jiangsu Province, running through
Hubei and Henan provinces and ending in Beijing, is scheduled to start in
October this year.
The third waterway, to be finished by 2050, will cut through high mountains
near Tibet to link the Yangtze with the headwaters of the Yellow River, which is
chronically dried up from overuse.
When the severe water shortage in north China is alleviated, the ecological
environment will benefit and the country will be able to sustain social and
Meanwhile, prevention and alleviation of water pollution in theYangtze will
also be a priority to ensure the diverted water is clean.
As part of the project, 24 billion yuan, or one third of the budget for the
diversion canal running through Jiangsu and Shandong provinces, has been
earmarked for 379 projects designed to cut waste pollution in areas along the
canal, including waste water treatment plants.