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Southwest-Northwest Water Diversion Project Infeasible: Geologist
A noted Chinese geologist Monday said the proposal to divert water from the Yarlung Zangbo River in southwest China to quench the thirst of northwest China is not feasible.
Zhang Zonghu, an academician from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said the proposed project is too costly and technologically is not safe.
Speaking at the annual conference of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) in Xi'an, the provincial capital of Shaanxi in northwest China, he explained that the proposed water diversion route runs through the most complicated and vulnerable land forms, and much of the areas is subject to earthquakes and geological disasters.
Zhang made the remarks in response to the water diversion proposal raised by many experts over the past several years.
The contradiction between water demand and consumption for northwest China has been caused by out-of-order exploitation of its natural resources, thus causing huge waste of water resources, said Zhang.
"Improving water use efficiency is the best way to solve the problem."
Northwest China is classified as a dry area, where there is not rich water resources, but it has a lot of sparsely populated land, where the per-capita water resources are much more than the eastern part of China, he said.
Raising water efficiency in farming is of great importance for northwest China, where the farming industry accounts for over 90 percent of the water used in the region, he added.
The annual amount of water used in the region totaled 207 billion cubic meters, of which 139 billion cubic meters is usable.
There is still some potential to be tapped as only 59.2 percent of it has been used.
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