On Diversion Project's Eve, Han River on Edge

The Han River gently glides through the heart of China, winding from north to south for 1,500 kilometers through a fertile valley that covers more than 150,000 square kilometers.

In Hubei Province alone, the Han is a lifeline for nearly 20 million people and tapped for economic activities that account for about half of the province's gross domestic product.

But all that economic growth has come at a high price for the river, its ecosystem and millions of people who rely on its water for life and livelihoods.

Some sections of the river are clean, but others are polluted. And now, the Han faces more pressure than ever with the accelerating construction of China's huge, nationwide South-North Water Diversion Project.

The middle section of the project is designed to divert water from the Han northward to slake the thirst of growing economies in Beijing and other dry areas of northern China. An eastern leg of the diversion is partially finished, and a western section may never be built.

Water flow on the middle and lower reaches of the Han will fall by 26 percent after the project's first phase is completed, according to an environmental assessment by the State Council's Office of the South-North Water Diversion Construction Project.

Critics say lower water levels will render many local farm irrigation canals useless, make shipping more difficult, hurt the river's self-cleaning capacity, and endanger one-third of its fish species.

Several experts in Hubei have warned that ecosystem damage on the river, which empties into the Yangtze River, may be worse than forecast. They say official data on the upper river's surface water volume is based on statistics compiled between 1956 and 1990. But the surface volume has declined since 1990 by, according to some experts, at least 10 percent.

Tale of Two Provinces

A formal groundbreaking is expected soon for the upper Han stretch of the diversion, called the Han-Wei Water Diversion Project, in Shaanxi Province. After its scheduled completion in 2015, the diversion is expected to improve lives and meet demands of local industry, especially in central Shaanxi, by tapping water from behind a dammed portion of the river called the Danjiangkou Reservoir.

But downriver and below the dam, many in Hubei are sitting on pins and needles. They're anxious because the project will divert water northward to the distant Wei River, a tributary of the Yellow River.

The project's first phase will divert as much as 1 billion cubic meters of water per year – an amount equal to 25 percent of the Danjiangkou Reservoir.

The second phase is expected to raise the total diversion to 1.5 billion cubic meters. And by 2015, the middle and lower reaches of the Han will lose at least 10.5 billion cubic meters of water every year.

During interviews with Caixin, many Hubei residents and officials criticized the Han-Wei project, calling it an unfolding disaster. One bone of contention is that, during years of planning, neither Shaanxi government nor central government Ministry of Water Resources officials sought input from Hubei officials and residents.

Not until mere months before the project's start did Hubei representatives actually sit down with Shaanxi representatives at a discussion organized by the water resources ministry, which approved the project before sending it for a final review by the National Development and Reform Commission.