The Chinese government says its contractors are on schedule to complete this month the first phase of the $62-billion South-North Water Diversion Project. Originally proposed by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1952, the SNWDP is a large-scale water-transfer project that will convey water from the Yangtze River and its tributaries in southern China to the Yellow and Hai rivers in the water-stressed and heavily populated North China Plain.
The environmentally controversial scheme is designed to provide water to approximately a quarter of China’s 1.3 billion people, including inhabitants of the Beijing and Tianjin megacities. The SNWDP comprises eastern, central and western routes, each of which will feature an extensive network of open-water channels, pumping stations and tunneling systems that ultimately would transfer 44.8 billion cubic meters of water per year.