The city plans to build a big pump station at one of the city's two major water sources to take out more fresh water to ensure sufficient supply, the Shanghai Water Authority said yesterday.
The pump station, capable of extracting 3.4 million cubic meters of fresh water each day, will be built near an existent station on the southern bank of the Yangtze River, which supplies 20 percent of the city's fresh water needs. The rest is provided by the Huangpu River.
Once completed, it will expand the water extracting ability at the Yangtze by 213 percent to reach 5 million cubic meters daily, according to the authority.
The municipality gave the green light for the project recently.
Construction will begin by the year's end and take around one year, the plant builder said.
"The project will increase fresh water supply to our water plants, whose demands keep growing," said Gu Yuliang, general engineer with Shanghai Raw Water Co.
The company is in charge of supplying fresh water to the city's 13 major water plants, six of which in the north are partly or totally dependent on the Yangtze.
The six plants demand up to 1.8 million cubic meters of fresh water each day, while the Yangtze can only supply 1.3 million.
Their requirement is set to reach about 2.2 million cubic meters soon, as they will be expanded to increase supply capacity to the area, where tap water demand is growing.
Big pipes, 17-kilometer long and 2.4 meters in diameter, will also be built to ensure each plant has two pipelines for fresh water distribution.
The company will invest 578 million yuan (US$69 million) for the project, officials revealed.