Sunday, December 7, 2008

China delays finishing mammoth water project


China has postponed completing a huge water transfer project to quench its national capital's thirst, citing stubborn pollution worries for pushing the target date back four years to 2014, official media said on Saturday.

The South-North Water Diversion scheme will channel water from the Yangtze River and its tributaries to ease shortages across northern China, where population growth and frantic industrialization have drained dams and underground reserves.

The main "central route" stretching 1,267 kms (787 miles) from the Danjiangkou Dam in central Hubei province to Beijing was due to be finished in 2010.

But not now.

Hubei officials said on Friday that pollution and ecological strains in the rivers feeding the dam will make that impossible, Hubei's Changjiang Times said, in a report reprinted by the official Xinhua news agency ( www.xinhuanet.com ).

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