BEIJING: China will expand a massive project that diverts water from the Yangtze River Basin (YRB) to the drought-prone north this year, making the Xiong’an New Area in Hebei province one of the new beneficiaries.
Almost 9.5 billion cubic meters of water was diverted through the South-North Water Diversion Project last year, taking the total amount diverted to more than 40 billion cubic meters, Jiang Xuguang, chairman of South-North Water Diversion Group, told the company’s annual work conference.
He said the State-owned enterprise, which was established in October with registered capital of 150 billion yuan ($23 billion) to help bolster management of the project, is “promoting the construction of Xiong’an and Guanyinsi storage reservoirs”. Though named after the new area, the Xiong’an storage reservoir is located in the Xushui district of Baoding, Hebei.
During a tour of the construction site in late January, Zhang Guohua, head of the new area’s management committee, referred to the reservoir project as Xiong’an’s “water source” and “energy station”.
China announced plans to establish Xiong’an on April 1, 2017, to relieve Beijing of functions nonessential to its role as China’s capital. “It boasts great significance for guaranteeing the construction of the new area,” Zhang said in a news release issued by the committee. The Guanyinsi reservoir is located in Xinzheng, a county-level city in Zhengzhou, Henan’s provincial capital.
The South-North Water Diversion Project was designed with eastern, middle and western routes. As the most attention-grabbing of the three due to its role in bringing water to the capital, the middle route started supplying water on Dec 12, 2014. The first phase of the eastern route, which serves Jiangsu and Shandong provinces, started operation in November 2013.
– The Daily Mail-China Daily News exchange item
