Hard work and Yangtze water solve a problem
Forty years ago, the nine tap water factories in Jiading District provided a limited water supply of 58,000 tons a day using local river water. Today, the district’s daily water supply rises to 620,000 tons and high-quality Yangtze River water from Chenhang Reservoir replaces the local river water for the district’s residents.
Jiading now has its tap water company, including four tap water factories, two raw water plants and two regional pumping stations.
It has also built modernized water dispatching stations and water quality laboratories.
1980s: Tap water gained popularity in rural Jiading
“Tap water supply in Jiading underwent four stages: popularization, upgrading, intensive water supply and water quality optimization. Each stage is a leap forward from the previous one,” said Xu Baoming, former chief of the water supply and drainage design department of Jiading Tap Water Co.
The rural economy of Jiading was in its embryonic stage in the early 1980s after China declared its opening-up policy. As village and township enterprises developed and people’s livelihoods improved, popularization of tap water became urgent.
Faced with a backward water supply, people in Jiading adopted the slogan “To be rich, we need tap water, electricity and roads” and ushered the county to a rural water supply revolution that lasted for 12 years (Jiading was a county before it was established as a district in 1993).
With a total investment of 53.84 million yuan (US$7.77 million) Jiading managed to deliver tap water to all its 273 administrative villages and the population penetration rate of tap water reached 99.03 percent by December 1992, making the county Shanghai’s first to achieve whole region tap water popularization. From then on people in Jiading had no need to fetch water directly from rivers or wells.
1990s: Yangtze River as tap water source
The economy of Jiading gained rapid development after the region was established as a district in the early 1990s. But water pollution became serious along with industrialization. No matter how the tap water company changed its water intake from Huancheng River to Xinlianqi River, quality remained unsatisfactory.
“Plenty of foreign investors came to Jiading at that time. But some, once they drank a cup of local water, canceled their investment plan without hesitation,” said Xu.
Authorities in Jiading then targeted the Yangtze River as the new tap water source after specialized surveys and repeated discussions. Given that the nearest place in Jiading was 3.5 kilometers away from the Yangtze River, they planned to divert Yangtze River water from the Shugou Dam in Taicang in neighboring Jiangsu Province, build the Huating Reservoir with a water storage capacity of 600,000 tons and transfer the water to the Yongsheng Water Factory that would have a daily water supply capacity of 200,000 tons through 15kilometer-long pipelines. All this, they believed, could make water conditions Jiading turn a new leaf.
The project was initiated in 1994 and cost 300 million yuan. Xu, designer of the delivery pipeline, participated in construction throughout the process.
The 15-kilometer-long road where the pipeline would go through was walked by Xu five or six times and each time he would spend a whole day inspecting the road.
“I needed to bear in mind which road the pipeline would go through, how many households and utility poles there were on the way, and once the pipeline would go through, which utility poles had to be removed,” said Xu.
In the spring of 1997, the Yongsheng Water Factory was completed, marking the success of the Yangtze River diversion project. People in Jiading stopped resorting to polluted inland river surface water and the quality of tap water was ensured.
The new century: Everybody drinks water from Yangtze River
High-quality Yangtze River water used as tap water supplied major urban regions and industrial areas in Jiading after the diversion project was completed. But there were still some regions that depended on small township tap water factories using inland river surface water.
The poor quality of the water, low hydraulic pressure and less-than-ideal service standard had a negative effect on people’s lives and firms’ production.
To tackle the problem, the political advisory body of Jiading District put forward an agenda on an intensive water supply in 2004, aiming to merge small township tap water factories in accordance with market and industrial rules and put them under the guidance of Jiading Tap Water Company.
Among the 11 small tap water factories involved, seven were shut and four began to use water supplied by other factories. Two extra tap water factories were built, one underwent reconstruction and a 40.4-kilometer-long pipeline was spread out. The total investment exceeded 200 million yuan.
“The water leakage rate of many small factories was quite high. Sometimes the figure might reach as high as 50 percent. That is to say, only 50 tons of water was left from the original 100 tons when it reached people’s homes,” said Xu.
With nine months of effort, the district completed its intensive water supply construction and offered all its people high-quality Yangtze River water.
By 2007, the Huating Reservoir with 600,000 tons’ water storage capacity gradually lost some of its functions since the daily tap water supply in Jiading had reached 391,400 tons.
The problem was solved thanks to the construction of Qingcaosha Reservoir with a water storage capacity of 7.19 million tons in Shanghai. The new reservoir released the tap water supply burden of the city and tap water from Chenhang Reservoir could be assigned to people in Jiading.
“The water supply of Jiading underwent twists and turns. But through the efforts of countless people, the district is now supplied with high-quality Yangtze River water,” said Xu.