South-North water project 'relieves droughts': People’s Daily  

南水北调被疑导致河南大旱

(ECNS) -- An investigative report posted Monday by the People's Daily defended the South-North Water Diversion Project that plans to bring water to China's arid northern regions.

Located in central China's Hubei province, the Hanjiang River, the Yangtze's largest tributary, will play a key role in the route by supplying the Danjiangkou Reservoir, which is planned to quench the thirst of Beijing and about 20 other northern cities after this year's flood season.

However, the river is itself in need of water, and the Hubei meteorological department put the Hanjiang on its highest drought alert in early August.

Li Mingxin, an official at the Changjiang Water Resources Commission, a river basin authority dispatched by the Ministry of Water Resources (MWR), denied that the project had caused the drought affecting the Hanjiang.

"The climate caused it," Li said, adding that successive years of drought in upstream areas of northwest China's Shaanxi province have led to the decrease in water levels.

A Yangtze-Hanjiang water diversion project, affiliated with the South to North Water Diversion Project, has been in operation since August 8, according to Gong Fuhua, from the South to North Water Diversion bureau of Hubei province.

The Yangtze River has fed the Hanjiang through a 67.23 km-long canal to offset the effects of the drought and water diversion to the north, Gong added.

Li said the Hanjiang River has experienced low flows since the 1990s, but it can still meet the target of transporting 9.5 billion cubic meters of water per year to the north.

Furthermore, that target is not rigid, as the number each year depends on the conditions of the Hanjiang River, explained the project's chief engineer Shen Fengsheng.

As for doubts about whether the severe drought in Henan province is related to the project, the spokesman of the local flood control and drought relief headquarters said that the province is the not the victim, but the benefactor of the project.

The spokesman attributed the disaster to lower precipitation levels, which have decreased by 60 percent since June compared to the previous year.

Zhang Silong, head of the hydrological information center at the MWR, said the water shortage in many northern cities has not been alleviated, despite the fact that rainfall there has increased in some years.

The project, costing an estimated 500 billion yuan ($80.7 billion), has led to concerns over land use, possible regional climate change, environmental damage, impact on agriculture and relocations.