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Yangtze River brings livelihood to central China
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LI Shichao, a native of Wuhan on the Yangtze River, has always been fond of water and ships.
On World Water Day, observed annually on March 22, he sat in front of monitors watching vessels pass through the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydropower project. For him, it was just another Tuesday.
The theme of this year’s World Water Day is “water and jobs.” According to the United Nations, 1.5 billion people work in water-related sectors.
Li, a vessel dispatcher, is one of them. After graduating from the Navigation School of Wuhan University of Technology in 2014, the 27-year-old started working at the Three Gorges Dam as a dispatcher, responsible for planning lockage, sending directives and monitoring.
The Three Gorges project, located on a stretch of the Yangtze River in Hubei’s Yichang City, consists of a 2,309-meter-long and 185-meter-high dam, a five-tier ship lock and 26 hydropower turbo-generators. Its functions include water storage, flood control, transportation and power generation.
According to Li, a dispatcher’s workload can be seen as a barometer of China’s economic development.
“I heard from my senior colleagues that it used to be not so busy until a boom in shipping services in recent years,” he said, adding they currently provide dispatching services for 150 cargo vessels every day.
Last year, 119.6 million tons of cargo were transported through the Three Gorges, 8.7 times as much as in 2003, when the project started operating.
“I have seen more high-value-added cargo, such as automobiles, in the last couple of years, which is an indication of our country’s restructuring efforts in manufacturing,” Li said.
Li expects they will be even busier in the future, as the central government has vowed to develop the Yangtze River economic belt.
The economic belt will push for breakthroughs in innovation, industrial restructuring and economic development by 2020, according to a blue print document released earlier this month.
Zhang Hong, a water quality inspector, is also much busier than before.
Zhang, 49, is head of the environmental monitoring station at Zigui County on the upper reaches of the Yangtze, just before the river flows into the Three Gorges.
She and her station workers monitor the Yangtze, its seven branch rivers in the county, and groundwater.
“It’s like a battle every day, especially in winter, when the still river water is prone to pollution as the dam starts catching water for storage,” she said.
The number of station workers surged to 24 from 10 in 2010 because of pollution threats from industry as well as government efforts to improve water quality.
In late February, China announced a plan to improve the Yangtze’s water quality as part of wider measures to balance economic activity and environmental protection.
China classifies water quality into six levels, ranging from level one, which is suitable for drinking after minimal treatment, to level four, for water that is severely contaminated.
In the years leading up to 2020, local authorities will work to ensure that more than 75 percent of the water in the Yangtze economic belt meets at least the Level three standard, according to the National Development and Reform Commission, the top economic planning agency.
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