Society

China starts draining overfilled reservoir in Qinghai

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-13 08:10

GOLMUD, Qinghai - Hundreds of soldiers and police are rushing to complete a drainage channel to prevent a dangerously overfilled reservoir from overflowing and flooding a city of 205,000 people in Northwest China.

Authorities said they expect to drain the Wenquan Reservoir, 130 km from Golmud City, Qinghai province, by early Tuesday.

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More than 9,000 residents in the city, with an average elevation of 2,800 meters on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, had been evacuated by Sunday.

Golmud, which is Mongolian for "place with many rivers", is nestled in a mountainous region where melting snow from the Kunlun Mountains creates rivers that flow through to the Qaidam Basin.

Days of heavy rain this month overlapped with the melting snow, causing torrents of water to pour into the Wenquan Reservoir. The inflow pushed the reservoir's water level up above the warning line to 1.18 meters at one point, officials with the provincial disaster relief headquarters said.

According to the latest weather forecast, rain is due to soak Golmud and the surrounding area on Tuesday. Further rain is expected this week in the mountains south of Golmud, which might cause rivers in the region to swell and overflow.

Soldiers have been using excavating equipment since July 7 to dig a waterway from the Wenquan Reservoir. Trucks carrying earth, mud and rocks have dotted the mountain pass leading to the reservoir, almost four kilometers above sea level.

Deng Bentai, a deputy governor of Qinghai, earlier told Xinhua News Agency that if enough rocks were supplied to finish the waterway, work could soon begin on discharging the excess water from the reservoir.

Officials said work had almost been completed on digging the channel, which is 250 meters long, 12 meters wide and nine meters deep.

They expect the new channel and two existing channels to release 400 cubic meters of water a second, relieving pressure on the reservoir, which contains 240 million cubic meters of water, 30 million cubic meters more than its previous high.

If it bursts, the reservoir could flood Golmud with water up to four meters deep. The city's power and water plants are at risk, according to the municipal government.

The Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the world's highest railway, could also be hit by flooding, as it is only 40 km from the reservoir.

On July 8, a new round of rainstorms started to batter provinces and regions in central and southwest China, triggering floods and landslides, bursting dikes, and destroying houses and farmland.

In Qinghai, 28 people have been killed since July in the province's worst floods on record, which have affected the lives of 60,000 residents.

Yu Congle, provincial water resources chief, said he was not optimistic because the water levels of many rivers in Qinghai were up to record highs, while the flood control systems were not functioning well.

About 128 of the province's 150 reservoirs are in danger of bursting, he said. "We face an arduous task."