Water diverted through a massive south-north project will reach Beijing by 2014, partly easing the city's worsening shortage, a senior planning official confirmed.
Liu Yinchun, deputy director of the municipal government's Development and Reform Commission, also confirmed hundreds of thousands of people in Henan and Hubei would be relocated to make way for the water-diversion scheme.
The project aims to supply the arid north with water from the Yangtze River via three big waterways.
Liu said he was confident the central channel of the project would be completed in 2014. Beijing would be supplied with water from the Danjiangkou reservoir in Hubei, which stretches across the Han River, a tributary of the Yangtze.
He conceded that the city might have to endure difficult times until then, with the country's north hit by drought nearly every year.
But he played down the city's water shortage problems despite environmentalists warning of a looming crisis and the grave impact of water-diversion schemes. 'We have been diverting water from upstream regions [in Hebei ] every year, and we really appreciate the support of our neighbouring areas,' he said. 'I don't think the water shortage in Beijing is very severe.'
He said the government would continue to push conservation and the use of recycled water by upgrading standards for sewage treatment in dozens of wastewater facilities across the city in the next five years.