"China is suffering from serious water shortages in its northern regions that is affecting the livelihood of the people and endangering the eco-system," Chen Bangzhu, chairman of a key environmental committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), told a press conference on Wesnesday in Beijing.

"The north-south water diversion project is a mega-project that is strategically aimed at realizing the optimal allocation of water resources," he said.

Tang Qinglian, fomer vice-minister of construction and a CPPCC delegate, said estimated costs for the initial phase of the project would be around 150 billion yuan (US$18 billion) for what would become the world's largest water diversion project.

China's cabinet, the State Council, was expected to approve the project in the early years of the 10th Five-Year-Plan (2001-05), while a feasibility study by the Water Ministry should be completed by June, they said.

The main benefactors would be urban centers and industrial users in the north China plain, including Beijing and Tianjin, while new supplies of water would also work to alleviate water shortages along north China's Yellow, Huaihe and Haihe rivers, Chen said.

China's northern regions have been hit by successive droughts during the latter half of the 1990s, with the Yellow River increasingly drying up from its mouth for longer periods during the dry season and as non-renewable underground water supplies are increasingly tapped.

The first phase of the project consists of eastern and central water diversion "lines" which would divert water thousands of kilometers northward from the Yangtze River in Jiangsu province and the Danjiangkou reservoir in Hubei province.

The 1,150 kilometer (700 mile) "eastern line" would flow along the Grand Canal, China's ancient man-made water project whose earliest construction began in the year 605, and include 18 pumping stations and massive dredging from Yangzhou, Jiangsu province to the Beijing region.

The 1,200 kilometer central line would also run to the Beijing-Tianjin region, and would require the raising of the dam on the Han River at the Danjiangkou reservoir by 13 meters and displacing some 220,000 people to increase the capacity of the reservoir.

Water would then naturally flow northward toward Zhengzhou, Henan province, where the water would have to be lifted over the Yellow River and channeled towards Beijing, they said.

In all the project would try to divert some 18 billion cubic meters of water annually from the Yangtze River and some 14 billion cubic meters from the Danjiangkou reservoir, they said.

(China Daily 03/07/2001)