Search China Travel News:

South China's Guangdong Province will intensify its efforts to provide high-quality water here and to neighbouring Hong Kong, a water resources official said recently.

The province is now speeding up its overhaul of the Dongshen water diversion project, which will divert clean water from the upper reaches of the Dongjiang River, a branch of the Pearl River, to Shenzhen and Hong Kong.

The project began in August 2000 and is expected to be completed in August 2003.

The 51.7-kilometre-long project, with a total investment of 4.9 billion yuan (US$590 million), aims to divert 2.4 billion cubic metres of water each year. Of that total, 1.1 billion cubic metres will be diverted to Hong Kong. Shenzhen will consume 873 million cubic metres.

So far, 33.5 kilometres of the project has been completed and put into use, said Zhou Rifang, director of Guangdong's water resource department and head of the Dongshen project.

The project, first built in 1964 to ease Hong Kong's water shortage, has supplied more than 11 billion cubic metres of water to Hong Kong. That accounts for more than 80 per cent of the city's overall water usage.

Its upgrade is long overdue, officials said.

"By providing clean and high-quality water to Hong Kong, the project will further contribute to the prosperity and stability of the special administrative region," said Li Changchun, Party Secretary of Guangdong.

To ensure the water's cleanliness, no industrial projects were approved alongside the project. And some tourism facilities have been removed to guarantee the normal supply of the water.

When the project is finished, all the water will be diverted through a sealed diverting system like tunnels to guard the diverted water against pollution, Zhou said.