Hebei reservoirs to ensure Beijing water supply

BEIJING—The Beijing municipal government has finished drafting a distribution plan for 300 to 500 million cubic meters of water to be supplied from neighboring Hebei Province.
The Beijing News reports the water will be channeled into the municipal water pipeline system to supply Beijing residents. The newspaper report says the water supply will be diverted from Hebei via an “emergency” section of the country’s giant north-south water diversion project. The report says the Jingshi section, from Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital city of Hebei, to Beijing’s Tuanchenghu Lake, will be able to transport water in April next year to ensure water supply safety during the Beijing Olympic Games. Construction of some key parts of the section is at full tilt to have them finished on schedule.
The report says four large reservoirs in Hebei will provide clean drinking water to Beijing, with the water in one being directly drinkable. China originally plans to supply Beijing with water from the Yangtze River via the middle section of the water diversion project. However, as the Olympic games will further pressure the city’s water supply and the mid-section is expected to be finished by 2010, the Jingshi channel was adopted as an alternate route. Beijing, host of next year’s Summer Olympic Games, has intensified cooperation with the neighboring Hebei Province to protect water resources in its upper streams and ensure adequate supplies.
The municipal government has earmarked 100 million yuan (12.8 million U.S. dollars) to prevent water pollution and foster water saving in Zhangjiakou and Chengde, two cities in Hebei Province whose water feeds two major Beijing drinking water sources, Miyun and Guanting reservoirs. Currently 20 percent of the fund is already in place to financeseven projects, including a pollution prevention project at the source of the Heihe River in Chicheng county of Zhangjiakou.—Xinhua