This Day, That Year: Sept 5

Editor's note: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China.

On Sept 5, 1983, the country's then biggest water diversion project, which directed water from the Luanhe River in Hebei province to Tianjin, a major port and industrial city, started operations, as seen in the item from China Daily.

The project aimed to put an end to Tianjin's reliance on the salty Haihe River for drinking water. Its water supply distance has extended to 234 kilometers, and the amount available to about 2 billion cubic meters.

Water diversion projects have played an important role in easing water shortages.

The South-to-North Water Diversion Project carries 9.5 billion cubic meters of water every year through canals and pipes from the Danjiangkou reservoir in Hubei province to Henan and Hebei provinces as well as Tianjin and Beijing.

Thanks to the project, water resources in Beijing have been recovering, with the underground water level rising since 2016.

The project, proposed in 1952 and approved by the State Council in 2002, aims to optimize water resources using three main routes-the east, middle and west-designed to take water from the lower, middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze.

The first stage of the east route began operations in 2013, sending water to Shandong province.

In 2014, the middle route started transferring water to areas in North China including Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province.

The central authorities decided in 2014 to establish 172 major water conservation projects. As of last year, 134 have been approved, while 132 have started construction, including 23 that have been completed.

The investment in the ongoing construction of water conservation projects has exceeded 1 trillion yuan ($140 billion).