Biggest construction project in China since Great Wall: $62 billion aqueduct for Beijing

[sonomak]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-china-water-20100929,0,3195261.story

China moving heaven and Earth to bring water to Beijing
The $62-billion South-North Water Diversion, which will bring water to the parched capital, is being compared to the Great Wall. But environmentalists are up in arms about the 'replumbing' of the nation's great rivers.
By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times

It might be the most ambitious construction project in China since the Great Wall. The Chinese government is planning to reroute the nation's water supply, bringing water from the flood plains of the south and the snowcapped mountains of the west to the parched capital of Beijing. First envisioned by Mao Tse-tung in the 1950s and now coming to fruition, the South-North Water Diversion — as it is inelegantly known in English — has a price tag of more than $62 billion, twice as expensive as the famous Three Gorges Dam. It is expected to take decades to complete.

"This is on a par with the Great Wall, a project essential for the survival of China," said Wang Shushan, who heads the project in Henan province, where much of the construction is now taking place. "It is a must-do project. We can't afford to wait." Even by the standards of a country where moving heaven and Earth is all in a day's work, it is a project of enormous hubris. In effect, the Chinese are "replumbing" the entire country, says Orville Schell, a China scholar and an environmentalist, something "no country has ever done successfully in the past."

China is plagued by extreme weather. Vast river deltas in the south are inundated each year by deadly flooding, while the steppes of the north are swept by sandstorms. To remedy this, the engineers are creating a vast, hydra-like network of canals, tunnels and aqueducts that will extend thousands of miles across the country.

In complexity, it is something of a Rube Goldberg machine. The middle route — there are three in all —would siphon water from a tributary of the Yangtze River 570 miles southwest of Beijing. The water is then funneled through a canal that transverses three provinces and passes underneath the Yellow River. "It is a little like building the tunnel under the English Channel to connect France and England — except we're moving water, not vehicles," said Yang Sheya, 38, an engineering supervisor working on the underground aqueduct...

[pscot]

1. Like piping the Columbia

to L.A. But without the Columbia.

[Kolesar]

2. Reminds me of the drama of taking water from the Owens Valley farmers to L.A.

Relax, Jack, it's Chinatown.