China begins resettling 330,000 for water project

Yahoo News 19 Oct 09;

BEIJING (AFP) – China has begun resettling up to 330,000 people to make way for a much-delayed multi-billion dollar project to divert water to meet growing demand in the parched north, state media said Monday.

People in the central provinces of Henan and Hubei are being moved to make way for a canal from the Danjiangkou reservoir in Hubei to Beijing, Xinhua news agency said.

Under the project, waters from a tributary of the Yangtze river, the country's longest, will be diverted to arid northern China.

The canal is part of the central line in a projected 400-billion-yuan (58-billion-dollar) project originally envisioned as a three-line system of canals and pipes.

Environmentalists have long criticised the project for its huge costs, while warning of corruption in the building and resettlement processes.

Water was originally slated to begin flowing from the central line to Beijing by 2010 but was postponed to 2014 largely due to the resettlement issue, earlier reports said.

The delay will further complicate water shortages in northern China that experts blame on global warming, drought, and rising demand in the booming Beijing region.

Currently water is being diverted from parched Hebei province to provide emergencies supplies for neighbouring Beijing.

According to plans, in 2014 about 13 billion cubic metres (460 billion cubic feet) of water is expected to be channelled along the central canal from the Yangtze tributary every year, with one tenth earmarked for Beijing.

Costly plants to treat badly polluted water along the project's eastern line have also put construction and delivery of water on that line behind schedule, earlier reports said.

The difficulties on the eastern and central line also prompted the government to postpone construction on the western line which was slated to begin in 2010.

China's Great Hydro project
Billions of tonnes of water will be moved from the south to north
Peh Shing Huei, Straits Times 21 Oct 09;
# 330,000 people relocated
# Costs 3 times more than Three Gorges Dam

China has started to relocate 330,000 people as it pressed ahead on yet another awe-inspiring massive engineering adventure as ambitious as the construction of the Great Wall.

The South-to-North Water Transfer Project, or Nanshui Beidiao, will move billions of tonnes of water from the south of the country to the north, a diversion of hundreds of kilometres through pipes and canals.

Even as experts continue to debate the wisdom of the gargantuan hydro scheme, the authorities are pressing forward to overcome the limitations posed by northern China's arid landscape.

The project requires the uprooting of entire villages in central Henan and Hubei provinces to make way for a canal that would carry water from the Yangtze River to thirsty regions in the north, including capital Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province, reported the official Xinhua news agency.

The mass migration is the largest after the Three Gorges Dam - the world's largest hydroelectric project - forced more than 1.4 million people to leave their hometowns.

Hundreds of thousands are expected to be displaced for the eastern and central routes in the water diversion project. More will be affected once details of the western route are released.

But hydro expert Yang Jun of the Beijing University of Astronautics and Aeronautics believes the sacrifice is worth it. 'The South-to-North Water Transfer Project is critical to this country,' he told The Straits Times. 'Whatever sacrifices the people have to make, it will be just a short-term adjustment.'

According to Xinhua, the resettled villagers will be given cash and land for their losses. Aside from compensation for their homes, each family will be given new arable land in new villages. They will also get an annual subsidy of 600 yuan (about S$120) per person for 20 years.

But earlier this year, the villagers complained that they were forced to sign agreements to move and that they were offered less than half the land they currently have.

But their complaints are not likely to drown a five-decade-long project that was first mooted by Mao Zedong in 1952.

While the north accounts for 37 per cent of the country's total population and 45 per cent of cultivated land, it has only 12 per cent of its water resources. Yet in the south, about 1,000 billion cubic metres of water from the Yangtze empties into the sea each year.

It took the Chinese government nearly five decades of research and planning to finally approve the world's largest water transfer project in 2001, in large part to ensure last year's Beijing Olympics would not be a parched Games.

But the US$62 billion (S$86 billion) plan - which is three times more expensive than The Three Gorges - has been delayed repeatedly because of environmental concerns and migration challenges.

The three proposed routes - eastern, central and western - to channel water to the north from the Yangtze are in various stages of blockages.

The central route, which involves the relocation of villages in Hebei and Hunan, will not start flowing until 2014, four years behind schedule.

The delays have raised questions on whether the western route, to be built on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and yet to be started, is even viable.

More importantly, some experts wonder if the project could ever satisfy the north's thirst even if all three routes are to be completed.

The official China.org news portal, which is under the State Council Information Office, had warned in a commentary that the project should not be seen as a panacea to the country's water woes.

Still, the ambitious enterprise will go on. Said Prof Yang: 'It will succeed, largely because this country has strong political will... This is a huge project for the development of the Chinese people.'

Additional reporting by Lina Miao