Work has been completed on two crucial tunnels of the Shijiazhuang-Beijing section of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project.

"We tunnelled around the clock for eight months before we reached the other side of the hill," a project manager in charge of the tunnelling said yesterday.

"From now on, our work will shift from groundwork to concrete pouring."

Experts are confident that the success of the 1,800-meter-long tunnels will give added impetus to the Shijiazhuang-Beijing Section of the project, which was launched in 2003.

The 307-kilometre long section is designed to link four reservoirs in north China's Hebei Province with Beijing to help ease possible shortages in China's capital city.

Upon its completion next year, the 17 billion yuan (US$2 billion) Beijing-Shijiazhuang section is expected to carry 400 million cubic meters of water per year.

The south-to-north water diversion project consists of three south-to-north canals, each running more than 1,000 kilometers across the eastern, middle and western parts of the country.

By 2010, urban and industrial water consumers in Beijing and Tianjin two cities plagued by worsening water shortages are expected to use water taken from the Yangtze River by the channels.

"This will optimize the country's existing water resources from within its major rivers and rearrange China's unevenly distributed water supply," said Zhang Jiyao, top official of the project's construction committee.

(China Daily June 19, 2006)