Five years ago, the central route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project began feeding water to Beijing and transferring water from the Danjiangkou Reservoir in central China's Hubei province to quench the thirst of dry areas in the north.
Since then, diverted water has become the lifeline for over 12 million residents in the Chinese capital, with the central route supplying a total of 5.2 billion cubic meters to Beijing.
Before the arrival of diverted water, Beijing was in a serious shortage of water as the per capita of water resources was only 100 cubic meters, which is far lower than the international water scarcity level of 500 cubic meters.
Now, the diverted water is supplying the city's downtown areas and Daxing, Mentougou, Changping, and Tongzhou districts, alleviating the water shortage by increasing the per capita of water resources to 150 cubic meters, up 50%.
The quality of water transferred through the central route has stood above the second tier on China's five-tier quality scale for surface water. Residents who used to drink Beijing's groundwater had to clear up the lime scale in water tanks, but this problem has been addressed by low calcium and magnesium content in the diverted water.
In addition to meeting daily water demand, Beijing has considered and implemented plans to store the diverted water, including using more than 6 billion cubic meters to replenish the reservoirs in Miyun, Huairou, and Shisanling.
As Beijing's largest surface water source, the Miyun Reservoir provides citizens a third of their drinking water every day. In 2004, its stored water dropped to a historic low of 1 billion cubic meters. However, with the supplement of 450 million cubic meters of diverted water, the reservoir is back to life and has hit the highest amount of stored water at 2.6 billion cubic meters by November this year.
The protection of the water sources has become another challenge for local authorities. To make sure the diverted water is clean, their ecological conservation efforts include transforming 6,933 hectares of marginal farmland into forest, closing up 17 large-scale livestock farms, and planting more than 666 hectares of trees. A river-in-chief system is also set up to restore the ecology of the river routes along the diversion project.
Due to the water scarcity over the past years, Beijing has had to rely on exploiting its groundwater, which diminished its water level in consecutive years.
The diverted water has replenished over-exploited groundwater in the northern regions. As of October, the average level of groundwater in Beijing's plain areas stood at 22.78 meters, 2.88 meters higher than the average before Beijing started receiving water from the project in late 2014. The projected ended 16 consecutive years of groundwater level decline.
Looking to the future, Beijing is ready to use the diverted water to ensure its continued development. According to its two-decade masterplan (2016-2035), Beijing aims to raise per capita water to about 160 cubic meters by 2020 and about 220 by 2035. Its total water consumption is expected to be within 4.3 billion cubic meters by 2020 and meet the national standard by 2035.