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Questionable Future for Taiwan Water Pipeline
Water resource officials said Monday they were unaware of a plan to transport drinking water from the Chinese mainland to Taiwan, Chinadaily reported Tuesday.
"No such project has been proposed,'' an official with the Ministry of Water Resources told Chinadaily in a telephone interview.
The official, who declined to be named, also questioned the feasibility of the plan in regard to water and financial resources on the Chinese mainland.
The Chinese mainland at present is supplying 70 per cent of Hong Kong's fresh water from the Dongjiang River through an 83-kilometre river course that traverses 12 towns in South China's Guangdong Province, said the official.
As of the proposed plan for Taiwan, experts said it could be helpful to cross-Straits communication.
Wu Zhiming, a professor of engineering at Qinghua University who two years ago suggested an undersea cross-Straits tunnel like the Euro-tunnel to facilitate trade and economic co-operation between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, said the project is "necessary'' and "a very good thing.''
Wu said that whether the plan is possible will depend on the amount of water supply the Chinese mainland can provide, the costs and management of the project, and the price of transporting the water.
A feasibility study conducted by Taiwan officials indicated that importing drinking water from the mainland would reduce costs to US$1 per ton for water conveyed through undersea pipelines, compared with US$3.22 per ton for desalinated water, the local media reported.
To build a 25-kilometre undersea pipeline from Fujian to Kinmen and Matsu, where underground water is scarce and contains salt, will cost about US$45.2 million, according to the study.
In general, China is a country short of drinking water. The country's per capita water possession is about 2,300 cubic metres, one fourth that of the world's average.
But about 80 per cent of its fresh water is disproportionately concentrated in the Southeast.
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