China to move thousands for huge water scheme


Reuters June 30, 2010

BEIJING: China will move 345,000 people, mostly poor villagers, within about two years.

The move has to take place to make way for a vast scheme to draw on rivers in the south to supply the increasingly dry north, an official newspaper said on Tuesday.

The forced resettlement for the South-to-North Water Transfer Project will be the biggest China has undertaken since building the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s biggest hydroelectric scheme, said the People’s Daily.

The project involves an eastern route to take water from the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and a central route to tap rivers flowing into the Danjiangkou Dam in central China. The scheme has been troubled by delays, cost increases, pollution and the burden of resettling displaced farmers.

Zhang Jiyao, the official in charge of the project, said the mass move for the central route could be more demanding than the Three Gorges Dam move, which sparked years of contention with displaced residents unhappy with compensation and conditions.

Big dams and hydro projects have featured among China’s engineering trophies symbolising its growing wealth, but are also a lightning rod for persistent discontent.

The South-North Project is the latest among such efforts and the drive to finish resettlement for the rising Danjiangkou Dam by 2013 has already stirred complaints from farmers, who say they are being moved to poorer land with dim job prospects.

The dam is being raised to store more water, which will then be drawn along 1,421 km of canals and tunnels to Beijing, the nearby port city of Tianjin and surrounding areas.

Published in The Express Tribune, June, 30th, 2010.

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