The second-phase of the World Bank (WB) financed project to harness a river that traverses Nanning, capital of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, has started.
The 14-km Chaoyang Creek has been seriously polluted by sewage and trash from local residents' daily life, said a local official in charge of the project.
The entire harnessing project, the largest of its kind in Guangxi, will use the World Bank loans worth 600 million U.S. dollars and is expected to be finished in three stages. The first phase began with the 3-km western section of the river in 1997 and was completed in June last year.
The water in the western section of the river has turned clear and clean, and the western section of the river is now flanked by grass and cultural plazas instead of trash heaps that used to be on both banks of the river, said the official.
The official added that Nanning, with a population of 100,000, aspires to become a green city with the best living environment in the country.
(People's Daily 01/14/2001)