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 | Sunday, April 23, 2000, updated at 11:16(GMT+8) | ||||||||||||
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China Draws Flood Control Plan for Northeast CitiesChina has drafted an overall plan to speed up flood control on Songhua and Nenjiang rivers to combat floods such as those which roared downed the rivers in the summer of 1998.The plan, approved by the State Council, the country's highest governing body, is scheduled to be implemented in the next ten years with an estimated cost of 40-50 billion yuan (US$ 4.8 billion to six billion), Zhang Jiyao, vice-minister of water resources said at a press conference Friday. "The plan covers all sections of the two flood-prone rivers in northeast China, but focuses on the protection of major targets in that region," said the official, quoted by today's China Daily. According to Zhang, the targets will include major cities, railways, oilfields and large rural areas downstream of the proposed Ni'erji Reservoir on the Nenjiang River, Fengman Reservoir on the tributary of the Songhua River and other parts of northeast China along the mainstream of the Songhua River. One of the most important parts of the plan is to raise the standards of anti-flood projects, protecting the area's largest and most important cities and its industrial centers. Plans are to raise the standard of projects shielding Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang Province, from the 1994 state-set criterion of being able to withstand the worst flood in every 100 years to the worst in every 200 years. Anti-flood works in Jiamusi, Mudanjiang, Songyuan and Daqing will be upgraded to withstand the worst floods in 100 years instead of the present capacity to withstand the worst floods in 50 years. According to Zhang, similar anti-flood schemes are expected to be drafted soon to be improve flood-control systems along the rest of China's major rivers and lakes. The 1998 summer floods, the worst since 1954 on the Yangtze in central China and the most devastating one in northeast China, shocked the government and the people. The deluges hit some major sections of the two water systems in northeast China's provinces. Their intensity was such that they were only likely to occur once every 300 to 400 years, said experts. The new flood-control plan also includes comprehensive measures to harness the two rivers and emphasize flood diversion projects, with consideration given to improving flood water discharge capacity. The new plan will be based on the construction of levees and dykes along the two rivers with the addition of some major reservoirs. It will also include other engineering and non- engineering projects, including water and soil-erosion control and the protection of wetlands. Levees and dykes along the Songhua and its tributaries run for about 16,000 km, with 4,245 km lining the mainstream of the river and 1,272 km its tributaries.
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