BEIJING, Sept. 17 — Reporters learned from China South-to-North Water Diversion Group Co., Ltd. and the Tianjin Water Authority that, as of September 10, the South-to-North Water Diversion Middle Route Project had diverted more than 10 billion cubic meters of water to Tianjin. Of Tianjin's 16 administrative districts, 15 now use South-to-North water, benefiting more than 13 million people. The continuous supply of South-to-North water has greatly optimized Tianjin's water supply pattern, effectively alleviated water resource shortages, and significantly raised the water supply guarantee rate.

According to the introduction, the Tianjin main line of the South-to-North Water Diversion Middle Route and Tianjin's supporting projects within the city began water supply simultaneously on December 12, 2014, strongly safeguarding the city's overall water supply security, greatly optimizing the water resource allocation pattern, and driving an overall improvement in Tianjin's water ecological environment. It has become another lifeline of urban water supply for Tianjin after the Luan River-to-Tianjin Water Diversion Project.

Tianjin has fully established a river-diversion water supply engineering system represented by the projects supplying water from the Yangtze to the central urban area and to the Binhai New Area, achieving dual-source security from both Yangtze River diversion and Luan River diversion and improving the quality of urban tap water. It has implemented a rural drinking water quality and efficiency improvement project; through measures such as building centralized water supply plants, newly building and expanding water plants, constructing and renovating water distribution plants, and laying transmission and distribution pipe networks, it has gradually replaced rural groundwater sources with externally diverted water from the Yangtze and Luan rivers, thoroughly solving the problem of excessive fluoride in drinking water in some rural areas and improving drinking water quality for 2,817 villages and 2.868 million rural residents. Since the Yangtze River diversion began, all 24 routinely monitored indicators of the raw diverted water quality have consistently remained at Surface Water Class II standard or above; the qualification rate of urban water supply quality has remained above 99%, and the qualification rate of rural water supply quality has reached above 93%.

The South-to-North Water Diversion Middle Route Project provides domestic and production water to Tianjin, effectively freeing up ecological water that had long been diverted for other uses and creating conditions for Tianjin to improve its water ecological environment. Since 2016, Tianjin has carried out regular replenishment of key rivers in the central urban area such as the Haihe River, Ziya River, and North Canal, and the water environment appearance of key rivers such as the Haihe River has been significantly improved. Tianjin has adhered to the principle of saving water first and diverting water afterward, giving full play to the rigid constraint role of water resources, promoting conservation and intensive use of water resources, and building an online monitoring platform for key water users and an information system platform for water intake and use management. Metering has achieved full coverage for non-agricultural water intake projects and intake points of large and medium-sized irrigation districts, and the online monitoring rate has reached 86% for water intake projects of more than 500,000 cubic meters of surface water and more than 50,000 cubic meters of groundwater. By the end of 2023, Tianjin had built 1,963 water-saving enterprises (units) and more than 1,800 water-saving residential communities, and all 16 districts of the city had completed the construction of water-saving society standards.