110-metre-high dam makes the Danjiangkou reservoir. {I. e. slightly taller than one and a fifth American football fields are long, but a small dam compared to world's largest: China's Three Gorges Dam.}
To carry the flow over one river in Henan province, Chinese engineers built a 12 kilometre aqueduct -- the longest in the world. The water uses a 7.2 kilometre-long tunnel to go beneath the Yellow river -- China's second biggest waterway -- described in official reports as "the most enormous river crossing project in human history".
After decades of planning and at least 33 billion dollars of investment, over a billion cubic metres of water is projected to flow to the capital every year, through more than 1,200 kilometres of channels and pipes -- the distance from London to Madrid. Another 8.5 billion cubic metres -- equivalent to 3.4 million Olympic-sized swimming pools -- will reach provinces along the way.
{I have other posts on the South-North water project, which I call the "half Nile" as it moves slightly more than half the Nile's annual flow half the Nile's exceptionally long length. - A water transfer by man, about ten times greater than #2.}
Water availability per person in Beijing is on a par with Middle Eastern countries such as Israel, threatening economic growth, the key source of support for China's ruling Communist party. China's government says the project, which will ultimately have three routes and an estimated $81 billion total cost, will solve a chronic shortage in China's northern cities.
Looking over the Yellow river in 1952, Communist China's founding father, Mao Zedong is reported to have said: "The north of China needs water and the south has plenty. It would be fine to borrow some if possible." At a time when a single word from Mao could launch a project, studies were swiftly begun ...
{There were pauses due to lack of funds, and more pressing problems, like people starving with forced formation of collective farms - far way Beijing sending fleets of tractors to plow muddy fields etc. Farming MUST be locally managed. Except for inserts in curly brackets like this one, the above text is from:
http://news.yahoo.com/doubts-giant-china-projects-water-reaches-capital-034005462.html with some re-arrangement by Billy T.}
However, China learned from its mistakes.* Also China can do multi-decade before first benefit projects that US Congress will not fund as 90% of the members who would need to increase debt or taxes will no longer be trying to get re-elected when ANY first benefit is realized.
This is why the US's serious water shortage in the SW, especially California, will be much more extensively solved, with greater environmental damage, via energy-hungry water desalination plants. Their "benefits" can be available in less than 3 years after the ground-breaking ceremony.
* Despite adverse soil and water conditions, China has the world's highest yield per acre wheat production! Beating even Canada, in part because has longer growing season. The Chinese government still owns almost all farm land, but continued the rights of the peasants inefficiently working it for decades; however about a decade ago, the CCP allowed them to lease their right of use to giant and efficient "agro-corporations." Now these ex-pig farmers** are moving to the new cities at rate of more than a million per month.
** Pig-Farmers, is no slur - China did and still does raise more hogs than the rest of the world combined does - pork is the favorite meat in China, and consumption is rapidly growing with the increasing wealth (real purchasing power) of the average Chinese - why China buys so much corn grown in the US mid-west.
