Shandong Ready for South-North Water Diversion Project

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, January 08, 2002

Shandong Ready for South-North Water Diversion Project

Preparatory work of the east route of the huge south-north water diversion project in Shandong section has lately been completed and construction of the project is expected to kick off this year, says a concerned official.

The east route of the project will involve a total investment of over 36.7 billion yuan. The first phase of which will take 7 years and cost 16.7 billion yuan. It is designed to supply water to areas south of the Yellow River and Shandong Peninsular, as well as north Shandong via tunnel through the Yellow River, and also for emergency water transfer to Tianjin and eastern Hebei. The Shandong section of east route runs into Nansihu Lake from Hanzhuang Canal, and traverses across five cities-- Zaozhuang, Jining, Tai'an, Liaocheng and Dezhou with a full length of 487 km and the Jiaodong line 704 km. The two lines are in a "T" shape in Shandong, reaching Zaozhuang in the south, Dezhou in the north, Dongpinghu in the west and Weihai in the east. They are able to supply water to 14 cities of Shandong's 17 cities, or 77 percent area of the whole province.

A lot of preparatory work has been done in recent years in Shandong. In order to control and reduce pollution 368 small industrial enterprises have been closed down. Meanwhile, an investment of over 4 billion yuan has been made to lift the sewage treatment rate to 34 percent. On the other hand, reforms will also be carried out gradually to lift water fees to raise fund for water project construction.

Three routes of the south-north water diversion

According to Zhang Jiyao, vice minister of Water Resources, the project will have three water diversion routes, namely the East Route, Middle Route and West Route, after 40 years of investigation and analysis.

The three planned water diversion routes are designed to connect the Yangtze with the three largest rivers in the north - the Yellow, the Huaihe and the Haihe rivers.

The construction of each route will be carried out in three phases respectively, Zhang said. By 2010, the first and second phases of the East Route construction and the first phase of the Middle Route construction should be completed. Total cost of this work will be more than 180billion yuan (about 22 billion U.S. dollars).

The construction of the West Route, the largest of the three, will cost over 300 billion yuan (about 36 billion U.S. dollars), he added.

Preparation work of the water diversion (English)

Engineering details of the East Route (Chinese)

By PD Online Staff Li Heng

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