China Enhances Flood Control Ability over Major Rivers

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2001-12-24

China's overall flood control capacity has been improved markedly due to the strengthening of flood control systems over the country's major rivers, said Zhang Jiyao, vice-minister of Water Resources.

   The Yangtze River suffered a great economic loss in the flood season of 1998. After reinforcing its dikes the next year, however, dike breaches were reduced to one sixth of the 1998 level.

   Flood control projects in the Taihu Lake valley effectively alleviated flood disasters, which brought an economic benefit of 9.2 billion yuan (about 1.1 billion U.S. dollars), twice that of prime investment.

   Zhang said that since 1998, the Central Government has stepped up the development of projects associated with the water sector with a total input of 136.4 billion yuan (about 16.4 billion U.S. dollars).

   The annual investment is more than four times higher that in the "Eighth Five-Year Plan" period and nearly three times of that in the first two years of the "Ninth Five-Year Plan" period, said Zhang.

   "Currently, China has reinforced dikes for about 30,000 kilometers, including over 10,000 kilometers of first and second class dikes along the mainstreams and tributaries of the major rivers," Zhang said.

    When referring to the progress of the reinforcement of the Yangtze River dikes, Zhang said that the central and local governments have spent 30.7 billion yuan (about 3.7 billion U.S. dollars) in strengthening the 3,385-km dikes along the mainstream of China's longest river. Work is expected to be completed before the end of next year."

   In addition, the dike reinforcement projects in the Taihu Lake, Songhua River and the lower reaches of the Yellow River have also acquired great achievements with some of them performing well.

   According to Zhang, China now has 85,000 reservoirs, among which over 30,000 are in dangerously poor condition.

   The renovation of these problem reservoirs will ensure that they can hold water normally in flood seasons, which is of great significance in the flood control work, said Zhang.

   Up until now, the Central Government has started the work of maintenance and reinforcement over more than 450 reservoirs that are in a dangerous condition with a total investment of 6.8 billion yuan (about 819 million U.S. dollars), Zhang said.

   Now over 180 key problematic reservoirs have completed their renovation work with 5.8 billion cubic meters of water storage capacity restored.

   Zhang also pointed out that with the obvious enhancement of major rivers' flood control ability, China will shift the focus to a group of large water resources projects, such as the South-to-North Water Transfer Project, during the "Tenth Five-Year Plan" period.


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