The achievement suggests that the capital city is keeping ahead in the nation's water-saving campaign, deputy head of Beijing Water Authority Bi Xiaogang told a press conference.

In the industrial sector, he said, the water consumed was down to 680 million cubic meters from 1.05 billion cubic meters while agricultural water consumption declined from 1.65 billion cubic meters to 1.32 billion cubic meters.

As 77 percent of Beijing's residents take measures to save water at home, the water saved amounts to 5.1 million cubic meters a year now, two and a half times as much as the storage capacity of Kunming Lake in Summer Palace of Beijing.

With a volume of 260 million cubic meters of recycled water used in 2005, Beijing will have built 11 plants to raise its daily recycling capacity to 880,000 cubic meters by 2008. The goal is to increase the proportion of recycled water to 50 percent of the total consumption, making the Olympic bid commitment a reality, Bi said.

At present, Beijing is able to supply 2.78 million cubic meters of water for the urban area every day. It plans to put in some 500 million yuan, or about 62 million US dollars to raise its capacity to 3-3.1 million cubic meters per day by the end of 2007, sufficient to meet the demand of the Olympic Games.

According to the Water Authority, a water quality monitoring network is in place to ensure that the water quality of the city meets the standard of the World Health Organization (WHO), a pledge it made in the bid for hosting the Olympics.

Six sewage treatment plants are under construction in addition to nine already in operation, with an aim to treat over 90 percent of the sewage in 2008.