The water supply project from southern to north of China, the largest of its kind in the world, has sent more than 70 billion cubic meters of water by its median route since it started to Operating at full speed in December 2014.
According to China South-to-North Water Diversion Corporation, this huge water transfer project has become a crucial line of life for 26 large cities and more than 200 districts, benefiting around 114 million inhabitants in Beijing, in Tianjin , at Hebei and Henan.
The effects were particularly pronounced in Beijing, where diverted water now represents almost 80% of the urban water supply in the capital. A large part of Beijing drinking water is now sent over 1,000 kilometers along the project of the project from the Danjiangkou reservoir, in the Hubei province (center). The water flows north by channels and pipes, passing under the yellow river before arriving at Beijing treatment plants.
In Tianjin, the scope of the project extended to 15 of the city’s 16 administrative arrondissements, the infrastructure improvements to expand water access to rural areas thanks to various initiatives to improve the Drinking water in rural areas.
During the operation of more than a decade of the project, the service zones and the beneficiary populations experienced a constant expansion, according to a manager of China South-to-North Water Diversion Corporation.
The project also played an essential role in ecological restoration in northern China. Continuous water replenishment made it possible to alleviate the overexploitation of groundwater and to restore a continuous flow in the main hydrographic systems of the North, in particular the Hutuo, Yongding and Daqing rivers.
The megaprojet of water adduction transports water over long distances from the south of the country, rich in water, towards the northern regions, where hundreds of millions of people once suffered from a “shortage of water absolute “, according to the definition of the United Nations.
