Desalination plant for thirsty Beijing

A coastal desalination plant planned for east of Beijing could provide a large portion of the drinking water for the parched Chinese capital by 2019, the state news media quoted officials as saying on Tuesday.

The reports indicated that the government and state enterprises were investing heavily in desalination projects to alleviate a dire water shortage in northern China.

The reports, citing officials who spoke over the weekend and on Monday, said that the proposed plant, to be located in the city of Tangshan in Hebei Province, had already been approved by a provincial development agency. The plan is to complete construction of the plant by 2019 and for it to supply one million tons of fresh water each day, which could account for one-third of the water consumption of Beijing, a city of more than 22 million people, officials said. A headline on an article published by Global Times, a populist state-run newspaper, said, “Seawater to supply Beijing in 2019.”

The plant would be the core of one of the biggest desalination projects in China. It is the second phase of a desalination project that is run by Aqbewg, a joint venture company formed by Aqualyng, a Norwegian company, and Beijing Enterprises Water Group, which has its headquarters in Hong Kong and is a subsidiary of a large state-owned company.

The first phase of the project, a plant east of Beijing in a district of Tangshan called Caofeidian, already produces about 50,000 tons of water each day for the district’s use, officials said. The water comes from Bo Hai, a body of water just off the Yellow Sea in northeastern China. The second, larger plant would cost an estimated $1.1 billion, and the pipelines to Beijing, about 170 miles long, would cost $1.6 billion, the state news media reports said. The price for the water in Beijing would be $1.29 per ton, twice as much as the current price of tap water, the reports said.

Desperation answered

Northern China has been suffering for many years from a chronic drought, and officials in the central and local governments have been desperately searching for ways to bring drinking water to the most populated areas.

The affected areas include Beijing and Tianjin, which has 12 million people. Tianjin has a $4 billion desalination plant that uses Israeli equipment and is owned by a government-run conglomerate. In 2011, that plant — the Beijiang Power and Desalination Plant — was one of two in Tianjin and supplied a suburb with 10,000 tons of desalted water daily. It plans to expand the amount pumped daily to 180,000 tons.

The desalination projects are in addition to an enormous engineering feat called the South-North Water Diversion Project, which aims to transport at least six trillion gallons of water each year to northern China from the Yangtze River and its tributaries, which are in southern China. That project consists of a series of canals and dams costing an estimated $62 billion.

The eastern and middle routes have been under construction for years and have gone over budget, while a western route crossing the high and rugged Tibetan plateau is still only in the proposal stage.

In December, the Chinese government announced that the first phase of the eastern route had officially begun drawing water from the Yangtze and transporting it to Dezhou, in the northeastern province of Shandong. Once finished, the eastern route will have 912 miles of canals and waterways. Pollution has been a persistent problem on that route, and officials have had to order the construction of 426 sewage treatment plants.

The middle route, also plagued by problems and criticised by environmental
advocates, runs more than 800 miles from Hubei Province to Beijing. The plans call for the relocation of about 350,000 villagers to make way for the canal.

Since it began operation in September 2008, a so-called emergency supplement to the middle route that diverts water to Beijing from reservoirs in Hebei Province, which surrounds Beijing, has provided the Chinese capital with 1.5 billion cubic metres, or 400 billion gallons, of water, Global Times reported. Officials in Hebei, which itself has a huge water shortage, have objected to this diversion.