Beijingers Able to Drink Water from Yangtze River in 2007

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, February 09, 2002

Beijingers Able to Drink Water from Yangtze River in 2007

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. If thing goes smoothly, Beijingers will be able to drink the water of the Yangtze River in 2007.

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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 1.2 billion U.S. dollars).

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 12 billion U.S. dollars), 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.

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 Middle Route (Chinese)

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