Yellow River project leak causes flood in Shanxi village

A water leak at a Yellow River diverting facility has filled an artificial lake overnight on Tuesday in North China’s Shanxi Province.

Local residents said the leaking water facility was the auxiliary dam of a storage pond of the Yellow River Diversion Project that supplies water to Taiyuan, at the hillside of a mountain in Huyan village, Taiyuan, China News Service reported on Wednesday.

The Shanxi Yellow River Water Industry Group Corporation Limited, the company in charge of the project, published a statement on Wednesday saying that repair work was completed at 9 am and the project can restart normal water supply to Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi.

Lu Bin, director of the press center of Jiancaoping district that administrates the village, said the leak did not injure anyone.

However, the report said many villagers had been relocated, without offering the number of residents affected.

“I went back home in the evening and saw the flood from the mountain,” a villager told the Global Times on Thursday, who posted a video on Sina Weibo that shows a black SUV engulfed by water beside a ditch where the flood occurred earlier the day.

The witness added that the flood’s effect on people’s life was limited and the situation has improved.

The flood was above kneeheight, he recalled.

The Yellow River Diversion Project of Shanxi is a project that cost over 10 billion yuan and took 10 years to be completed to improve the water shortage of the province.