Since China's South-to-North Water Diversion project started operations in 2008, a total of five billion cubic meters of water has been transferred to Beijing by May 8, 2018, according to the project office in Beijing.
Statistics show that 3.51 billion cubic meters of water have been allocated to local waterworks, 940 million to reservoirs in Shisanling, Huairou and Miyun as well as other emergent water sources, in addition to 550 million sent to local rivers and lakes.
The diversion has not only increased the amount of water resources in Beijing by raising the water resource per capita from 100 cubic meters to 150 cubic meters, but has also improved the quality of water, benefiting over 11 million residents. Moreover, the diversion has also greatly improved water conservation and restoration as well as the surrounding ecological environment.
The second phase of the water diversion project, which began around December 2014, has so far built a total of 200 km of water transfer pipelines, built or renovated seven waterworks, and added storage capacity of 50 million cubic meters. The Danjiangkou Reservoir, located in central China across the border of Hubei and Henan provinces, has supplied an annual average of 1.05 billion cubic meters of water to Beijing.
The third phase aims at further improving the water supply system by 2020, and enhancing the interconnection of rivers and lakes in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region with the aid of 1.5 billion cubic meters of annual transferred water.
After the completion of the third phase, the project will be able to secure the water supply for key areas including Beijing's sub-center, the new airport and the new districts of Fangshan, Daxing, and Mentougou, as well as supplementing the water source for the city's "three-rings" system and some channels of the Yongding River, the office said.