South to North Water Transfer Project - Article Example

SOUTH TO NORTH WATER TRANSER PROJECT INTRODUCTION Scar of water has been a great issue in the region of china from centuries. History clearly depicts suffering of Chinese people in north regions and why this region remained undeveloped for long times. But, with the passage of time technology improved and population increased. This increase in population forced people to move to the outskirt areas with limited resources. Now people are living in north of China but were living miserable life due to scarce water resources. One major reason for this scarcity of water is that china is not connected to large water body from any of its sides other than frozen sea. The southern and eastern parts of china are greatly influenced by the monsoon winds from the Arabian Sea. These winds are having high level of water content which causes extensive rain in china but these winds reach northern and eastern parts of china only when winds are strong and monsoon season is at its peak. During weak monsoon winds, only southern and eastern areas are getting rains and northern and eastern parts remain deprived of summer rains. This scarcity of water has resulted in the destruction of strong dynasties in china because it leads to extreme drought and economic crisis. In order to overcome this scarcity of water Government of China planned for grand engineering project of transferring south water resources to north by spreading an amazingly design canal system. It has been planned that at the end this grand project will be able to transfer 44.8bn cubic meters of water to north each year. This is going to be one of the masterpieces ever build in the world. The plan of this project is to transfer water from a south lying river Yangtze to north in order to overcome the thirst of north. North of China is actually having economically important and strong industrial as well as technological hubs of the country including Beijing which individually accommodated about 22 million people. This much large population in North results in shortage of water obtained from aquifers in that region. Also in most of the areas covered in North, industrial development was only possible at the expense of agriculture in order to complete water requirements in industries. South to north water project is expected to be completed in 2050 and was started in 2002. This mega project is based on the fact that the four major rivers of China, named Yangtze, Yellow River, Haihe and Huaihe will be linked together. This project explicitly consists of the construction of three major transfer routes of water extending from south to north and supplementary distribution system which will be capable of distributing water to eastern and western parts as well. MAIN BODY Although China is not a country with poor water resources, it covers few of the world’s largest rivers. Per capita availability of water to the local people is much satisfactory around 2,123 cubic meters per annum. But the issue with the scarcity of water is still much threatening. Reason behind this threat is the uneven distribution of water resources within the country. This uneven natural distribution has affected the inhabitants in the area. One of the largest rivers of the world is Yellow Rivers in south China. This river used to fall into ocean about 40 years back but due to decreased rain, and increased population consumption increased which resulted in lowering the water level and hence resulted in drying the water in the region river falls into the ocean. Few years before the dry out of Yellow River, this river caused extensive flood and destruction in the neighboring areas due to extensive rain. Another important river of this area is the Yangtze River. This river faced the opposite trend as that of the yellow river. Initially the river was having safe level of water but with the passage of time water level increased due to extensive rain in that area. This resulted in the threat of over-flooding. Preventive measures were taken to counteract the upcoming threat and mega dam structures were created on the river which were three in number. South to North Water Diversion Project The idea of transferring south water resources to north was first conceived by Mao Zedong. The basic idea behind this diversion was to borrow south water resources and get them available to north in order to overcome dwindling water resources of North China. In this water transfer project the idea was to transfer water resources from south to north by making use of extensive canal and underground water ways. This project was under consideration from a long time but was started in 2002 after getting official permission. The whole project was divided into three major steps among which the first one was to start working on the eastern route. Eastern Route Working on the eastern route of the project was the simplest and easiest task. This route was already having a strong irrigation structure which mainly consisted of the Grand Canal. Here this canal system was used to transfer water to north by making few changes in the path. The purpose of the eastern project was to make use of water from Yangtze River and get it diverted through Grand Canal system to the north of the country. This project actually made use of a pumping station which was capable enough to pump water through the height of 65km so that the people of Tianjin could be facilitated with water. This project was having some complications while transferring water to Tianjin. The main problem rose due to the gravity which caused the flow of water much difficult to north. The Grand canal channel is not having smooth bed rather the bed is having much variation in elevation from the sea level throughout the canal length. The channel bed keeps on rising for the length of 1156km and transporting water from Jiangdu to Dongping Lake was the big issue. The total increase in height of bed level between Hangzhou and Jining was observed to be 130 feet. Therefore, there as only one solution to overcome this problem and that solution was to make use of highly reliable and impressive pumping system. The introduction of pumping system to the project means that it would need extensive consumption of energy resources to keep the flow of water from south to north and eastern part of China was already suffering from acute energy crisis. Therefore, the uphill movement of water was made possible by making use of 13 low lift pumping stations in which pumps were connected in series and the total number of pumps was counted to be 70. Another issue with the construction of the eastern part of the project was the construction of two parallel underground tunnels passing below the Yellow River. Construction of these tunnels was also followed by the improved methods of treating waste water so that it might not mix with the tunnel water. This project of the construction of eastern route of the water diversion system, alone cost about $10 billion and about 14.8 billion cubic meter water will be easily transferred to north per year.(MWR, 2004a; US Embassy, 2003). Beside all the effort in developing the eastern part of the water transfer system, there was one limitation that the transferred water not having good quality. The reason of getting this low quality water to Tianjin by eastern route is that the canal water lies close to the water sewerage system which results in mixing of the two waters at different places. (Yang and Zehnder, 2005). Socio-Economic Impact Central Route The eastern part of the project was completed in 2005 and soon after its completion; work was started on the next part of the project. This majorly consisted of a longer route in the middle which was spread over the length of about 1,267 km (China Daily, 2005). The central route is termed as the least complex part of the SNWT project. In this part of the project no additional power source is required to move the water uphill and also it has least energy requirements. The water flows under the action of gravity and while moving from south to north it faces a drop in height of about 100m throughout the path. Another Factor associated with this part of water transfer project is that the quality of water is relatively good as compared to the one provided in eastern route. Besides all the positive impacts of carrying this project, it also carries a number of negative impacts in terms of social, economic and ecological factors. This project is followed by the construction of large channels for the flow of water which has resulted in displacement of people living in that area and has ruined their property. The water supplies constructed in this part of the project are not only concerned with the transfer of water only but also industrial, municipal and agricultural waste will be processed. This project was designed to supply south water to Beijing, China’s capital, Tianjin and plains of northern China. This project also facilitates the water requirements in the areas of Hubei and Henan. From the middle of the Yangtze River an already working major tributary, Han tributary was made use of. From this tributary extensive canal system was needed to be dugged in order to provide water to Beijing. This part of the project does not need any pumping station ass gravitational force will be enough to provide flow of water from Han to Beijing. This project is having the estimated cost of $10 billion (US Embassy, 2003) whereas the transfer capacity of water is estimated to be 9.5 billion cubic meter initially just after the completion of waterway and with the passage of time flow is expected to be increased to a level of about 13 billion cubic meters (MWR, 2004a). While constructing this project, there are a number of limitations but the most important concern is that at the origin of the second project that is Yangtze Han region, is having limited access to water resources and will not be able to deliver plenty of water to the city. In 2001 the central part of the project was revised in order to get permission to pass the water through Danjiangkou dam reservoir. This dam was already working on the Han River which Is the tributary of Yangtze River and enters it from north at Hubei province which lies at the upstream of Three George Dam and it was planned that this project will be completed by 2010 which is still not possible. Figure 1: Worker while working to increase the height of Danjiankuo Dam Along with the construction of 1,380km long channel for the flow of water which resulted in the relocation of about 320,000 people, this project also included in some major modifications in the constructional changes of Danjiankou Dam. The displacement of this huge amount of people was because of the new canal system and extensive area requires constructing the reservoir at the intake of the Han canal (US Embassy, 2003). The constructional changes introduced in Danjiankou Dam were more concerned with the height of the dam. An approximate increase of 14.6m was constructed in the height of reservoir resulting in the total height to be 176.6m. This increase in the height of reservoir was necessary in order to keep the water flowing uninterrupted from dam to Beijing and Tianjin. This route helps Yangtze river water to easily move to Yellow river with discharge rates of about 5 billion cubic meters per year. Western Route The third and last part of this SNWT project is the most difficult, expensive and challenging task. It has just recently started and is planned to make use of Yangtze River water. Water from the Yangtze River is planned to be diverted from its upper three tributaries. These three tributaries will fall into the Yellow River. The route of this part of project majorly consists of mountainous and rocky areas in the western regions of China and constitutes to about the height of 4000 meter above the sea level. At this much altitude, it is nearly frozen throughout the year which makes the construction in this region more difficult. This project costs too expensive and estimated cost of the project is about $37 billion annual water transfer capacity of 17 billion cubic meters (MWR,2004a; US Embassy, 2003). The total financial investment of about $60 bln for the SNWT project will be only partly provided by the government (20%). A special water fee in the benefiting areas of 35% and bank loans of 45% will supply the rest (US Embassy, 2003). CONCLUSION Kuo concludes the project is another example of an engineer-dominated government’s fondness for huge-scale vanity projects with a particular weakness for mega-water works. No wonder. Without the man-made institutions — a robust regulatory regime and the rule of law — the Chinese government is bereft of tools to induce the efficient use (and conservation) of water. And so it builds canals and moves water from one watershed to another, creating havoc and perpetuating the problem of China’s crippling water crisis.  (2pages) REFERENCES Read More