Water diversion to improve Beijing's water quality

Water from Beijing's taps later this month will be much cleaner than currently thanks to China's south-to-north water diversion project, an official said Monday.

Sun Guosheng, director of the project's construction commission office in Beijing, told Xinhua that water from the south will have much less hard mineral sediment, a problem that has haunted Beijing residents for years.

"Beijing's water sources, mainly from underground, contain too much incrustation scale such as calcium and magnesian ion, posing potential health hazards," Sun said. "With the new water, people's life quality will be improved," he said.

The middle route of China's south-to-north water diversion project will see a massive 9.5 billion cubic meters of water per year pumped through canals and pipes from the Danjiangkou reservoir in central Hubei Province to the northern provinces of Henan and Hebei and to Beijing.

The water transfer project was conceived by former Chairman Mao Zedong in 1952. The State Council approved the ambitious project in December 2002 after debate lasting nearly half a century.