The South-North Water Transfer/Diversion Project

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The South-North Water Transfer/Diversion Project is an over US$79bn multi-decade infrastructure mega-project in China whose objective is to divert approximately 44.8 billion cubic meters of fresh water annually from four rivers in the Southern region of China i.e. the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, the Huaihe River, and the Haihe River, to the more arid and industrialized northern region via three diversion routes (the Eastern, Central and Western routes) that cut across the eastern, central and western parts of the Asian country.

Project Overview

The Easter Route

The Eastern Route Project (ERP) which is completed involves the upgrade of the Grand Canal and will be used to divert between 8.9 and 14.8 km3/year of the total flow of the Yangtze River (between 600 and 956 km3 per year) to Northern China.

Water from the Yangtze River will be drawn into the canal in Jiangdu, where a giant 400 m³/s (12.6 billion m3/year if operated continuously) pumping station was built back in the 1980s. The water will then be pumped by stations along the Grand Canal and through a tunnel under the Yellow River and down an aqueduct to reservoirs near Tianjin.

The diversion will be slightly over 1,155km long and involves the construction of 23 pumping stations with the installed capacity of 453.7MW in the first stage alone to complement the seven existing ones, which will themselves be rehabilitated and upgraded.

This part of the project will also include nearly 9km of tunnels, from the outlet of Dongping Lake to the inlet of the Weilin Canal, including a 634m long siphon section, together with two 9.3m diameter horizontal tunnels 70m under the Huanghe riverbed.

The Central Route

The central route is also known as the middle route will divert water from the Danjiangkou reservoir on the Han River via new canals near the west edge of the Huanghuaihai Plain to flow through Henan and Hebei Provinces to Beijing, a diversion route totaling up to approximately 1,267km in length. The nearby city of Tianjin will also draw water from the trunk line near Xushui in Hebei Province.

This route involves the construction or rather raising the height of the Danjiangkou dam by increasing the dam crest elevation from 162 m to 176.6 m above sea level. It also involved the construction of a canal to push water all the way from the Danjiangkou Reservoir to Beijing, without the need for pumping stations, and two tunnels of 8.5m internal diameter some 7km long, with a flowing design of 500m³/s.

The western route

Construction of the western route, which traverses the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau between 3,000m–5,000m above sea level involves overcoming some major engineering and climatic challenges. Once completed in 2050, the project will bring 4 billion cubic meters of water from three tributaries of the Yangtze, that is the Tongtian, Yalong, and Dadu rivers, nearly 500km across the Bayankala Mountains and then on to northwest China.

The Cao River Aqueduct in the Central Route

Project team

Developer: South-to-North Water Transfer Project Company

Pre-project construction work: Hanjiang Water Resources and Hydropower

Project management: State Development and Planning Commission, the Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Construction, the State Environment Protection Administration, and China International Engineering Consultant Corporation.

Infrastructure development plans: GCW Consulting

Design and planning for the Eastern Route: Haihe Water Resources Commission and Tianjin Hydroelectric Investigation and Design Institute

Design and planning for the Western Route: Yellow River Conservancy Commission

Design and planning for the Central route: Changjiang Water Resources Commission

Construction for the Eastern Route: Hanjiang Water Resources and Hydropower

Construction for the Central route: Danjiangkou Water Resources and Hydroelectric

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