Turning of Chinese rivers: thousands of of canals and tens of billions of dollars
China suffers from thirst. Catastrophic shortage of water resources in the arid northeastern areas of the country began to hamper their economic development, forcing the authorities to start the largest engineering project in modern history. Until 2050, part of the flow of the Yangtze River through a system of hydraulic structures will be transferred to the north of China. Canals and aqueducts thousands of long, tens of billions of dollars and cubic meters of water...
China is home to about 20% of the world's population, with only 7% of the world's fresh water reserves. To all other things, they are distributed unevenly across a vast country. If the inhabitants of southern regions of China with a full-flowing Yangtze more or less water provided, the population of the North China Plain, the and Huang He, which is up to a third of the total Chinese 1.3 billion people, regularly suffer from arid climate.
For the first 11 years of the "turn of the Chinese rivers" project, according to different estimates, $28-35 billion were spent on it. The scale of construction works is striking: during the construction of the Eastern and Central Canals about 11 billion cubic meters of soil were moved and 22 billion cubic meters of concrete were laid.
The most difficult, at least in engineering terms, stage of works is still ahead. In Tibet, on the western part of the complex, it is planned to spend another $25-35 billion by 2050. Eventually, the largest engineering structure of our time, which has no analogues on the planet, should appear in the country. All previous experience of China's implementation of its super projects suggests that now only it can carry out work of such a huge scale, with a similar level of expenditure and accompanying risk.
In China, work is beginning on the resettlement of 330 thousand people from the areas of the transfer of rivers from south to north. It is assumed that three channels will be built (Eastern, Central and Western), through which a part of the flow of the Yangtze, , Huang He and rivers will be transferred in the north direction. The total length of the canals - one and a half thousand , the estimated volume of water that will come through them to the north of China - 50 million cubic meters per year. The works will be conducted for several decades and will cost 60 billion dollars.
The transfer of rivers makes the Chinese authorities to move to other areas of those whose housing was on the way to the Great Construction. Thus, to change the place of residence will have to residents of some areas of the central provinces of Henan and Hubei. Move people began about a year ago, for moving the authorities promise people good living conditions and assume all the costs of moving. Last time, due to the construction of the hydroelectric installation had to leave their homes a million Chinese.
Local environmentalists see the turn of the rivers as a threat to the environment; other critics of the project speak about inefficient waste of resources that will create a lot of difficulties for the but will not bring the desired amount of water to the north. In addition, these projects may create problems for navigation in