The annual operation of flushing silt from the ailing Yellow
River, China's second longest waterway, into the Bohai Sea, began
on Tuesday.
The operation, due to be completed on July 1, will enable the
river water to flow at 4,000 cubic meters per second, said the
Yellow River water resources committee in Zhengzhou, central
China's Henan Province.
It said this year's work, the sixth since this technique was
first employed in 2002, will last for 12 days instead of the
previous 15 to 18 days because water storage in Xiaolangdi
Reservoir, Yellow River's largest reservoir in the lower reaches,
is at least two billion cubic meters less than last year because of
drought.
The operation works by discharging water from three reservoirs -
Wanjiazhai, Sanmenxia and Xiaolangdi - to stir the sediment in the
Yellow River.
The Yellow River has been plagued by an increasing amount of mud
and sand and less water. Each year, the river bed grows higher due
to silt deposits, slowing the water flow in the lower reaches.
The Xiaolangdi project alone, which is second only to the Three
Gorges Dam on the Yangtze in terms of workload, has pushed hundreds
of million tons of silt into the sea thanks to the past five rounds
of silt-washing operations.
Now water flows at 3,500 cubic meters per second, compared with
1,800 cubic meters per second in this section of waterway in
2002.
The 5,464 meter-long Yellow River originates on the
Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, winds its way through eight provinces and
autonomous regions, and empties into the Bohai Sea in north
China.
(Xinhua News Agency June 19, 2007)
