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South-North Water Transfer Project |
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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2007) |
The South-North Water Transfer Project (Chinese: 南水北调工程; pinyin: Nánshuǐ Běidiào Gōngchéng) is a multi decade project being actioned by the People's Republic of China to better utilize water resources available to China. This is to be achieved through a South North Water Diversion Project (SNWD). Whilst the main thrust was to divert water from the Yangtze River to the Yellow River and Hai River, other spinoff plans are also loosely included. Amongst these, a controversial plan calling for the capture and diversion of water from Brahmaputra River, located in Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon north of India, has been under study for years. This is because the heavily industrialized Northern China has a much lower rainfall and its rivers are running dry. Already the Yellow River has often gone dry in its lower reaches in recent decades and some of the Hai River tributaries almost dried out throughout the year. Supply and demand conditions have often changed more rapidly than the project plans ability to accommodate the changes, resulting in much higher costs and reduced benefits. On the other hand, positive results have been seen in Beijing, host city of the 2008 Olympics.
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The idea for the South-North Water Transfer Project originated from Mao Zedong who said, "Southern water is plentiful, northern water scarce. If at all possible, borrowing some water would be good." After his comments, the Chinese Water Works Department conducted several studies on the project. After decades of study, the South-North Water Transfer Project settled on three different proposals for routes: The western route is in the western headwaters of the rivers where Yangtze River and Yellow River are closest to one another; the central route is from the upper reaches of the Han River (a tributary of Yangtze River) to Beijing and Tianjin; and the eastern route using the course of the Grand Canal.
The Grand Canal is currently being upgraded. Water from the Yangtze River will be drawn into the canal in Jiangdu City, where a giant 400 m³/s. pumping station was built already in the 1980s, and is then fed uphill by pumping stations along the Grand Canal and through a tunnel under the Yellow River, from where it can flow downhill to reservoirs near Tianjin. Construction on the Eastern Route officially began on December 27, 2002, and water is supposed to reach Tianjin by 2012. However, water pollution has affected the viability of this project.
The central route is from Danjiangkou Reservoir on Han river, a tributary of the Yangtse River, to Beijing. This route is built on the North China Plain and, once the Yellow River has been crossed, water can flow all the way to Beijing by gravity. The main engineering challenge is to build a tunnel under the Yellow River. Construction on the central route began in 2004. In 2008 the 307 km-long Northern stretch of the central route has been completed at a cost of US$2 billion. Water in that stretch of the canal does not yet come from the Han River, but from various reservoirs in Hebei Province south of Beijing. Farmers and industries in Hebei had to cut back water consumption to allow for water to be transferred to Beijing.1 The whole project is expected to complete around 2010. A major difficulty is the resettlement of ~250,000 persons around Danjiangkou Reservoir and along the route. Another problem is the influence on the Han River, where ~1/3 water are diverted. One long-term consideration is to build another canal to divert water from the Three Gorges Dam to Danjiangkou Reservoir.
The western route is to divert water from the headwater of Yangtze (and also the headwaters of Mekong or Salween downstream) into the headwater of Yellow River. In order to move the water through the drainage divide between these rivers, huge dams and long tunnels are needed to be built. The feasiblility of this route is still under study and this project won't start in the near future. Also, since many nations (Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam) rely on these rivers downstream, plans have met with stiff resistance from these nations.
Since the introduction of the project, it has created widespread controversy. Opponents to the project believe it is a waste of resources, it could create a large number of migrant people but transfers too little water, it won't provide an economic benefit, the dry season could cause the Yangtze River to suffer from water shortages, it would influence the Yangtze River's transportation, and it could cause a biological disaster. Defenders of the project believe the Yangtze River has a plentiful supply of water with large amounts of water flowing into the ocean annually. They argue that transferring one portion to the poorly irrigated areas of the North could solve the North's water scarcity issue.
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