Discussion on Water Supply Safety Countermeasures for the East

Route of South-to-North Water Diversion Project

Tongtong Wang

, Ziyue Zeng

2,*

and Yongqiang Wang

South-To-North Water Diversion Planning and Design Administration of the Ministry of Water Resources, Beijing 100038

China

Changjiang River Scientific Research Institute, Wuhan 430000, China

Keywords: South-to-North water diversion project, East route, Water regulation

Abstract: At present, the East Route of South-to-North Water Diversion Project is in good operation, ensuring the

safety of water supply in the water intake areas. However, there are many kinds of hydraulic structures in

the project. Due to the cross influence of water supply, flood control, drainage, shipping and other functions

of the project, some problems exist in the operation and dispatching of the project. These problems can be

divided into two types: water quantity dispatching problem and water quality guarantee problem. Aiming at

the potential problems of water dispatching, we proposed safety countermeasures of pumping stations,

rivers and lakes; In view of the problems existing in water quality, corresponding system and management

measures were proposed. Based on the above, this paper summarizes the beneficial experience of the East

Route project in improving the project transportation management system, strengthening water quality

monitoring management, standardizing the dispatching management process, preparing reasonable

dispatching scheme and emergency plan. This paper can provide references for the safety guarantee of

dispatching operation for the subsequent water diversion projects.

1 INTRODUCTION

South-to-North Water Diversion Project is a major

project to channel water from the Yangtze River in

the southern part of the mainland China to the north

through three routes. The project, considered by the

authorities since the 1950s, was formally launched

in 2002. Three 1,300-km canals will be constructed

in the western, central and eastern parts of China so

that water from the upper, middle and lower reaches

of the Yangtze River will be brought to the north,

where water supply is not adequate. With an

estimated investment of 486 billion CNY, the three

routes are supposed to be able to transfer 44.8 billion

m3 of water by 2050. To date, the East Route of the

South-to-North Water Diversion Project has been

working for almost five years in a good condition.

To better assess the effectiveness and efficiency of

the East Route, in the first, the operation condition

of the Phase I of the East Route were described.

Then the main difficulties in dispatching operation

were summarized and the security problems in the

dispatching operation were analyzed. In the end,

Safety measures were proposed and the experience

and Enlightenment were concluded.

2 OPERATION OF PHASE I OF

EAST ROUTE

The Phase I of the East Route of the South-to-North

Water Diversion Project was officially opened on

November 15, 2013. It has completed seven annual

water diversion tasks, with a cumulative water

diversion volume of 4.616 billion m3 into Shandong

Province. Among them, the water diverted into

Shandong Province from 2019 to 2020 is 703

million m

, and the net water supply is 434 million

, including 404 million m

of urban domestic and

industrial water supply and 30 million m3 of

ecological water supply. The Phase I project of the

East Route is stably operating and working in good

conditions with stable water quality, thus alleviating

the shortage of water resources in the water intake

areas, and resulting in good social, ecological and

economic benefits.

Wang, T., Zeng, Z. and Wang, Y.

Discussion on Water Supply Safety Countermeasures for the East Route of South-to-North Water Diversion Project.

In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Water Resource and Environment (WRE 2021), pages 103-108

ISBN: 978-989-758-560-9; ISSN: 1755-1315

103

Emergency water supply has been carried out for

many times during the operation of the Phase I

project of the East Route. In 2015, Liushan station

and Jietai station in Jiangsu Province were put into

drought relief operation in Huaibei area with the

pumping volume of 69 million m

, which played an

important role in ensuring regional production,

living, shipping and ecological environment. After

the completion of the 2016-2017 water diversion

plan, in view of the serious drought in Jiaodong and

Shandong Province, according to the relevant

requirements, the Jiaodong water division main

route was used to continuously divert water from the

Yellow River to the Jiaodong region. The existing

water volume of East Pinghu Lake was used as the

supplementary water source to supply 220 million

m3 of water to four cities in the Jiaodong region. In

addition, from 2019 to 2020, 30 million m3 of water

was supplied to protect the springs and replenish the

ecological water of Changqing Lake in Jinan, which

alleviated the downward trend of groundwater level

in Jinan during the water diversion period and

improved the water quality and ecological

environment of the Changqing Lake area.

3 MAIN DIFFICULTIES IN

DISPATCHING OPERATION

There are many kinds of hydraulic structures in the

East Route project, especially in the water network of

Northern Jiangsu area. Many rivers and lakes are

connected and intertwined with each other and the

water supply, flood control, waterlogging drainage,

shipping and other functions undertaken by the

project are cross influencing each other, which brings

some difficulties to the operation and dispatching of

the project, mainly in the following aspects:

(1) The East Route project has a number of

large-scale water lifting pumping stations, recycled

water interception, storage and diversion works, T-

shaped water transfer main route, Nansi Lake

regulation and dredging, Yellow River Crossing

Tunnel and other node projects. The water

transmission route is long with many water intakes.

There are mixed configurations with local water and

other external water transfer (mainly yellow river

water diversion in Shandong), so the water

dispatching relationship is complex.

(2) The water supply dispatching of the East

Route project needs to be considered in combination

with the flood control, drought resistance,

waterlogging drainage, shipping and other

dispatching of the basin and region. The

implementation of multi-objective joint dispatching

involves the interests of many water departments in

the water intake area, which is difficult to coordinate

(Li, 2010).

(3) The water intake areas along the East Route

project are economically developed with large

sewage discharge. Although the pollution control

planning and supplementary planning of the East

Route project have been implemented successively

when the main project started construction, and

certain effects have been achieved through the

implementation of structural adjustment, sewage

treatment, sewage interception and diversion,

ecological restoration and other projects. However,

there still exists serious phenomena water pollution

rebounding, low illegal cost and high cost of law

abiding. In addition, sudden pollution accidents in

the Huaihe River Basin occur from time to time

(Jiang et al., 2007), therefore how to continuously

ensure water quality is very important.

4 SECURITY PROBLEMS IN THE

DISPATCHING OPERATION

The problems affecting the normal dispatching

operation of Phase I project of the East Route mainly

come from two aspects: water dispatching risk and

water quality guarantee.

4.1 Water Dispatching Problems

In the first phase of the East Route project, the water

head is increased step by step through the pumping

stations, and the water level difference between the

pumping stations at all levels is transmitted by

gravity through the river. Several regulation and

storage lakes and reservoirs are set along the water

diversion route. According to different engineering

structures and functions, the East Route project can

be divided into four parts: water source, water

lifting, water transmission and water storage. The

safety of each part can affect the normal operation of

water dispatching.

(1) Hydrological problems of water source

The first phase of the East Route project raises

water from Jiangdu water control project in

Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province. The risk of water

source is mainly caused by the randomness of

hydrological phenomena

(Tang, 2020), such as

water shortage due to the reduction of rainfall and

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the increase of project scale, flood risk caused by

rainstorm, etc.

(2) Operation problems of lift pumping station

The water lifting system consists of 13-level 22

hubs as 34 pumping stations set up along the way

with a total lift of 65 m. With a total installed

capacity of 160 pumps, the total installed flow is

4,447.6 m

/s and the installed power is 366,000 kW.

It is a modern pumping station group with the largest

number of large pumping stations in Asia and even

in the world. 13 cascaded pumping stations are

distributed along the river section to the south of the

Yellow River. For the north of the Yellow River

water can be transferred by gravity (Liu et al., 2020).

The pumping stations of the East Route project

are mainly characterized by low lift, large flow and

long operation time. Some pumping stations also

have waterlogging drainage tasks. Therefore, the

pumping stations are required to be flexible, efficient

and reliable. Affected by the operating conditions,

equipment quality and technical conditions, the water

lifting efficiency of the pumping station is reduced,

and the water lifting capacity cannot meet the

planning requirements

(Liu & Geng, 2010). The East

Route project partially uses the completed River

Water to North Diversion Project in Jiangsu

Province. The latter has operated for nearly 40 years,

so the pumping station is partially aging and the

motor power is partially attenuated, affecting the

water lifting efficiency; 3 stations in Huai'an should

be overhauled every year and before the flood

season, otherwise the water lifting efficiency will be

affected due to the change of working point of the

pumping station. Secondly, because some pumping

stations have flood control functions to ensure

normal operation in flood season, flood overtopping

has become one of the risks threatening the safety of

the pumping station project.

(3) Operation safety of water conveyance channel

The water conveyance channel is located in the

south of Dongping River, and the double line water

conveyance is mainly composed of the Canal Route

and Yunxi Route as auxiliary. After the two routes

meet at Nansi Lake, they enter Dongping Lake

through Liangji canal. After leaving Dongping Lake,

it is divided into two routes, one through the Yellow

River and the small canal to Datun reservoir in

Dezhou and the other route connected to the channel

from the Yellow River to Qingdao through Jiaodong

water diversion main route to supply water to

Jiaodong area.

Some water delivery channels undertake the

tasks of water supply, flood control and shipping and

always maintain high water level operation.

Therefore, high water level operation and floods are

the main problems faced by the water delivery

channel of the East Route project, which is

manifested in the failure of the safety and stability of

the river embankment. Its planned water delivery

function have not been achieved, thus affecting the

function of the water delivery channel. In addition,

90 km of the canal line of the East Route project

passes through the Tanlu fault zone near Zaohe-

Suqian-Luoma Lake in Northern Jiangsu

(Geng et

al., 2012), which may be affected by earthquakes

and other geological disasters.

(4) Operation safety of impoundment lake

system

The water storage system mainly refers to four

natural lakes along the water diversion route,

including Hongze Lake, Luoma Lake, Nansi Lake

and Dongping Lake. Before the water supply of the

East Route of the South-to-North Water Diversion

Project, the operation of the water storage system

can be mainly divided into flood season and non-

flood season; after the water was supplied, it is

mainly the flood season and the water diversion

period. The impoundment lakes have encountered

high water level for a long time and some

embankments, especially those in Xuzhou,

Zaozhuang, Jining and other coal mining subsidence

areas near Nansi Lake, may cause subsidence due to

the increased load.

4.2 Safety Problems of Water Quality

The first phase of the East Route project uses the

existing regulation and storage lakes and canals to

deliver water, undertaking the functions of shipping,

flood control, waterlogging drainage, aquaculture

etc. Under normal working conditions, the water

quality of the water diversion main route has

basically met the water diversion requirements.

However, once problems in the working conditions

of the pollution control and water quality assurance

system, such as the sudden increase of pollution load

input or the operation failure of the pollution control

project happen, it will result in sudden water

pollution accidents and the water quality of the East

Route may be threatened. According to the survey,

the natural risk source of the water quality of the

first phase of the East Route project is flooding in

Nansi Lake basin. If the first major flood in the four

lakes in Central and South China occurs in advance

during the operation and coincides with the water

diversion period with the rubber dam at each estuary

collapsing and discharging, the polluted water in the

river will be discharged together with the large flow

Discussion on Water Supply Safety Countermeasures for the East Route of South-to-North Water Diversion Project

105

of flood, which will lead to water pollution

accidents. There are many man-made risk sources,

mainly including pollution control unit operation

failure, pollutants entering the water body caused by

shipping accidents, pollution accidents caused by

bridge and highway transportation accidents along

the main route etc. The main route of the East Route

project faces many kinds of sudden pollution

accidents, and different canal sections face different

risk sources, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Statistics of water quality risk sources during water diversion.

Canal section of main

route

Level of

risk

Possible water quality accidents during water diversion

Natural factors Artificial factors

Flooding in Nansi

Lake basin

Pollution

control unit

fault

Shipping

accident

Road and bridge

transportation

accident

Contrived

event

Yan

tze River ~ Jian

du Low ●● ●

Jiangdu ~ Hongze Lake Low ●● ●

Hongze Lake Low ● ●

Hongze Lake Luoma Lake Low ●● ●

Luoma Lake Low ● ●

Luoma Lake ~ Nansi Lake Hi

h ● ● ● ● ●

Nansi Lake Hi

h ● ● ● ● ●

Nansi Lake ~ Dongping

Lake

Low

● ● ● ●

Don

Lake Low ●● ●

main canal Low ● ●

Jiaodong water

conve

ance section

Low

● ●

North section of the

Yellow Rive

Low

● ●

5 SAFETY MEASURES

5.1 Water Dispatching Management

Measures

The water supply risk in the water source area of the

East Route project is low, so the preventive water

supply safety measures mainly focus on water

lifting, water diversion and water storage.

(1) Safety measures for water lifting pumping

station

The safety of the large water lifting pumping

station is an important guarantee to ensure the safe

operation of the East Route project. The specific risk

prevention and control countermeasures mainly

focus on paying attention to the inspection,

protection and maintenance of the pumping station

system, improving the management system of the

pumping station hub, improving the automation

degree of the pumping station, regularly monitoring

the foundation and improving the quality of the

management personnel of the pumping station hub.

The above measures can effectively avoid and

reduce the failure of the pumping station and ensure

the safe operation of the pumping station, thus

achieving the goal of water supply.

(2) Safety measures for water conveyance

channel

The water delivery channel of the East Route is

mainly to reduce the failure of the embankment

project. The specific countermeasures mainly

include strengthening and improving the

embankments; in case of seepage, improving the

resistance of embankment body and foundation to

seepage damage; in case of slope instability, the

upper slope should be cut and the lower foot fixing

and weight pressing should be adopted; for the

landslide caused by seepage, the measures of front

blocking and back blocking should be taken. At the

same time, implementing the approval procedures

for coal mining through the embankments, taking

countermeasures in the pre sedimentation area in

advance, obtaining water information in time and

implementing the real-time safety monitoring system

of embankment engineering (Zhang et al., 2021).

(3) Safety measures for impoundment lakes

The main measures to ensure the safety of the

impoundment system are to timely and

comprehensively grasp the operation of the flood

control project; do a solid job in sluice engineering

maintenance to ensure flexible opening, closing and

free operation; speed up the emergency treatment and

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reinforcement of coal mining subsidence section;

improve flood forecasting methods and continuously

improve forecasting speed and accuracy; further

improve the emergency plan, implement flood

control measures, and clarify the flood control

responsibilities.

5.2 Water Quality Safety Measures

(1) Institutional measures

Both Jiangsu Province and Shandong Province

have strengthened the construction of laws and

regulations to deal with water quality risks. For

example, Jiangsu Province has promulgated the

“administrative measures for the prevention and

control of water pollution in areas along the South-

to-North Water Diversion Project of Jiangsu

Province” and the “regulations on the prevention and

control of ship pollution in inland rivers of Jiangsu

Province”, so as to clarify the measures for banning

and limiting discharge in areas along the East Route

water transfer project; Shandong Province

implemented the “regulations on the prevention and

control of regional water pollution along the South-

to-North Water Diversion Project in Shandong

Province”, revised the “regulations on the prevention

and control of water pollution in the Nansi Lake

Basin in Shandong Province” and made clear

provisions on the control of water pollution in the

main area of the South-to-North Water Diversion

Project in Shandong Province.

(2) Management measures

In view of the water quality problems existing in the

first phase of the East Route project, relevant

environmental safety assurance measures should be

taken from all stakeholders, such as advocating

pollutant discharge enterprises to carry out cleaner

production and strictly controlling the abnormal

discharge of sewage, strengthening the operation

management of sewage interception and diversion

works to reduce the probability of abnormal

operation of the works, ensuring the normal

operation of the sewage treatment plant and reducing

the sewage concentration, controlling shipping

pollution and reducing ship oil spill accidents,

solving inter provincial water quality disputes, etc.

6 SUMMARY AND

CONCLUSIONS

Since the five water diversion years of water supply

and operation of the East Route project, the

beneficial experience in improving the project

transportation and management system,

strengthening water quality monitoring and

management, standardizing the dispatching

management process, preparing reasonable

dispatching scheme and emergency plan can provide

reference and enlightenment for the safety guarantee

of dispatching and operation of subsequent water

diversion projects.

(1) Perfecting the engineering transportation and

management system is the primary basis to ensure

the safety of water supply

In the water supply security of water diversion

project, it is necessary to formulate corresponding

dispatching schemes and put forward specific

preventive measures in close combination with the

project transportation management system and

actual operation environment. Drawing on the

experience of the East Route project, referring to the

regulations on the management of water supply and

consumption of the South-to-North Water Diversion

Project, and combining with the actual situation of

water supply of the project, formulating the division

of labor and responsibility system, clarifying the

responsibilities and rights of stakeholders and

building a management mechanism of unified

organization, hierarchical responsibility, joint

participation, respective responsibilities, risk sharing

and benefit sharing; improving the coordination

mechanism between river basins and regions;

building an implementation mechanism that the

region obeys the river basin and the river basin

drives the region, thus promoting the standardized

management of water diversion projects.

(2) Strengthening water quality monitoring and

management is a prerequisite for ensuring water

supply safety

In the operation management, establishing a fast

and accurate water quality monitoring system

together with the water quantity and quality

monitoring, supervision and inspection means,

optimizing the water quality monitoring schemes

and monitoring methods of water diversion projects,

and implementing the sharing of water quality

monitoring information between management

institutions and local governments. At the same

time, strengthening the supervision and inspection of

the sewage outlet and pollution source of the project

to ensure that the water quality of water diversion is

continuously improved and stably up to the standard.

(3) Standardizing the dispatching management

process is an important measure to ensure the safety

of water supply

Discussion on Water Supply Safety Countermeasures for the East Route of South-to-North Water Diversion Project

107

The operation of water diversion projects,

including the East Route project, needs plans and

systems in decision-making process, instruction

issuance and implementation, supervision and

feedback control and the improvement of the

accuracy of decision-making and the effectiveness

of instruction implementation. Firstly, when

formulating scheduling schemes, comprehensive

analysis and scientific demonstration should be

carried out to provide a good basis for decision-

making; secondly, we should standardize the

generation, decision-making, release,

implementation, supervision, feedback and

adjustment procedures of the dispatching

instructions, and use reasonable systems to reduce

the problems that may be caused by human errors;

thirdly, it is necessary to strictly implement the

operation technical regulations or application

methods of water conservancy projects and do a

good job in operation scheduling, project

monitoring, water volume monitoring, equipment

maintenance and other work, so as to avoid the risk

of endangering project safety caused by non-

standard operation.

(4) The preparation of feasible dispatching

scheme and emergency plan is the basic guarantee to

ensure the safety of water supply

The water diversion project should be based on

the design function, which may involve flood

control, water transfer, water quality protection and

other aspects. The analysis and research on the rain,

flood, drought and water demand laws of the river

basins involved in the project should be

strengthened. On the basis of scientific analysis, the

dispatching schemes should be further refined to

enhance the practicability and guidance of the

schemes, so as to do a good job in water dispatching,

shipping management, power guarantee, aquaculture

management and other guarantee work, thus to meet

the needs of daily operation and dispatching of the

project and ensure the safety of water supply along

the route. At the same time, preparing corresponding

emergency plans for possible cross-border water and

solid disputes, abnormal discharge of pollutants and

other emergencies, and conducting troubleshooting

in a timely or regular manner to ensure that

emergencies can be handled quickly. Through the

above measures, further coordinating the dispatching

objectives and the interests of all parties as well as

restricting the dispatching behavior and improving

the emergency response capacity.

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