Taiwan island gets water from Fujian
Water from Fujian Province spurts out from pipes at the Tienpu Reservoir in Kinmen yesterday as the Chinese mainland province began supplying drinking water to Taiwan’s Kinmen.
A water pipeline connecting the Chinese mainland coastal province of Fujian to Kinmen went into operation yesterday, delivering water from Fujian’s Jinjiang River to alleviate water shortages in Kinmen.
The source of the water-diversion project is Longhu Lake in Jinjiang City, the second largest lake in Fujian.
The 28-kilometer pipeline will provide 34,000 cubic meters of water daily to Kinmen, a small island attached to Taiwan but very near the mainland.
The investment totals 388 million yuan (US$57 million) and the water price has been set at NT$9.86 (33 US cents) per cubic meter.
The smooth operation of the water supply project is a great event in the history of Kinmen's development as well as cross-Strait relations, Liu Jieyi, head of the Taiwan Work Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said at a ceremony in Jinjiang.
Tang Dengjie, governor of Fujian, said the project carried the hope of people from both sides of the Taiwan Strait for peaceful reunification, and common aspiration for a better life.
In 1995, Kinmen authorities put forward the proposal to divert water from Fujian. The mainland-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits and Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation in June 2013 publicized a consensus on solving the water problem.
