OCTOBER 8 MUST have been a magical day in Taiyuan, the capital of China's northern Shanxi province. That was the day officials began delivering drinking water, diverted from the Yellow River through a 162km network of 25 canals, to a city where residents have adapted to shortages by storing water in pots and barrels.
Taiyuan is home to water-intensive coal-fired electricity plants that power large parts of China, and it illustrates the water shortage problem that much of the country's northern areas face.
The water diversion project is also a small-scale version of the 2,400km network of canals the government hopes to build throughout the country to address the north's problem.
The shortfall could be as high as 70 billion cubic metres per year and demand could increase by another 25 billion cubic metres by 2050, according to a report from the US Embassy in Beijing.
Water-intensive industries and fast-growing urban populations are two reasons for the shortages, and many experts are predicting the situation will only get worse.
The Yellow River, which many northern cities and agricultural areas draw from, was once second in flow only to the famous Yangtze. In recent years, it has often completely dried up before reaching the East China Sea. The proposed solution is a 500 billion yuan (HK$470 billion) network of canals that will divert water from the middle reaches of the Yangtze River.