China will work to provide 60 million more rural residents with access to clean drinking water as part of efforts to repair reservoirs and upgrade irrigation facilities, state media reported Wednesday.
More than 6,000 reservoirs across the country will be fortified and 400 rural counties will be provided with electricity generated by hydroelectric power stations, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing the head of the Water Resources Ministry.
China's cities are among the world's smoggiest, and the government says its major rivers, canals and lakes are badly polluted by industrial, agricultural and household pollution. According to Xinhua, 200 million rural people didn't have access to safe drinking water in 2008.
In a report earlier this month, the World Bank warned that "the combined pressures of rising water demand over limited supplies and deteriorating water quality from widespread pollution, suggests that a severe water scarcity crisis is emerging" in China.
China spent 29.5 billion yuan ($4.3 billion) last year on a program that brought safe drinking water to an additional 48.24 million people, Xinhua said.
China also plans to spend another 21.3 billion yuan ($3.11 billion) this year on the South-to-North Water Transfer Project, aimed at bringing water to China's arid north, Xinhua said in a separate report.
When completed, the project's three routes will move billions of tons (metric tons) of water from China's central, southern and western regions through pipes and man-made canals to Beijing and fast-growing cities in the north.
The estimated $62 billion project will pass by 44 cities, and could be nearly three times as expensive as the Three Gorges Dam, China's last mega-project. More than 300,000 people will be displaced by the project _ the largest water diversion program in the world.
The first stage is scheduled for completion in 2014.
Critics have warned that the project will cause environmental damage and still not quench the thirst of China's northern boomtowns.
