in china, the world’s most advanced water-rationing system

On one wall of the control centre, a mosaic of TV screens flickers back and forth between the latest satellite photographs and rainfall projections. On another, a huge screen tracks the entire length of the Yellow river – China’s second-longest waterway – with real-time data from dozens of monitoring stations showing flow speed, pollution levels and reservoir volumes.

The operation closely monitors the outflow volumes from each of the nine provinces that border China’s “mother river”, and decides whether they are on course to meet monthly targets. A sophisticated set of river controls allows engineers to intervene by opening or closing a high-tech network of automated sluice gates and monitoring devices. This gives them remote control over almost all downstream diversions of the water for agriculture and industry along its 5,464 km length.

The system also allows engineers to flush bad pollution spills through the system more quickly, which has contributed – along with economic, legal and policy changes – to the improvement in water quality and quantity on the main river.

Now Chinese hydroengineers are embarking on a plan to upgrade the “digital Yellow river” – what they claim is the world’s most advanced water-rationing system – to try to save one of the most overworked waterways on the planet from drought, pollution and the unsustainable demands of a surging economy.

The plan, which begins later this year, is a major enhancement of an already advanced management system that has helped to reverse the decline of China’s second-biggest river over the past 10 years.

Excerpt from an article originally written by Jonathan Watts in Zhengzhou for guardian.co.uk