China s quest to rewrite its future through vast engineering feats could test new limits as Beijing prepares a controversial scheme to divert water from Tibet to the parched Yellow River in the country s west. Li Guoying, director of the Yellow River Water Conservancy Committee, said in Beijing Tuesday the project was essential because the Yellow Rivers current flow is being exhausted by development demands in the west. "When the economic and social development of the northwest reaches a certain level and the potential of water- saving measures is exhausted, this project will be launched," he said.

The long-discussed plan to harness rivers cascading from the Tibetan highlands to quench Qinghai and other undeveloped western parts of China has growing official momentum, with construction possibly starting as early as 2010, said Chinese Academy of Sciences hydrologist Liu Changming. The so-called Western Route of the South-North Water Transfer Project will join the Central and Eastern Routes, already under construction, which are intended to draw water from the much larger Yangtze River for the water- scarce north as well as Beijing.

"Now the Western Route isnt just an abstract plan; it will go ahead," said Liu, who is advising the government on the project. "The route isn t especially long, but it s technologically challenging, and its a matter of resolving the engineering and environmental questions."

The Western Route of the South- North project will use a 300 kilometer- long relay of tunnels and channels to draw water from the Yalong, Dadu and Jinsha Rivers that flow into the southwest, Li said. The completed project would cost 300 billion yuan (HK$292.44 billion) at current prices, and the total cost of the whole South-North project is 500 billion yuan, he added.

The plan has received the general backing of the nations leaders, including President Hu Jintao, a hydro-engineer who worked in western regions for decades, Liu said. But it promises to be the most controversial of Beijings efforts to yolk Tibet s "under-used" rivers to nourish national development.

In its first phase, the scheme will transfer about four billion cubic meters of water annually - about the size of California s main water transfer scheme, according to Liu - and decades later the project will divert 17 billion cubic meters a year. In past decades, the Yellow Rivers annual runoff has been about 58 billion cubic meters, according to the Conservancy Committee.

Environmentalists and advocates of Tibetan autonomy have said the project threatens to tear the region s web of environmental and cultural inter-dependence. "This project is definitely not meant to develop Tibet," said Tashi Tsering, a Tibetan expert on the region s natural resources at the University of British Columbia in Canada. "Tibets water availability is actually quite limited and these rivers depend on glaciers that are receding. The consequences just havent been thought through."
(The Standard, 03/08/2006)