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Water supply resumes for NW China city after pipes repaired
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-12-18 10:25

The water supply to a northwest China city resumed on Wednesday afternoon after more than 100 workers repaired water pipes which burst on Tuesday.

The burst of the pipes to Baoji City, Shaanxi Province, was the third one in two weeks, affecting about 70 percent of the city's 600,000 urban residents.

Corruption has been blamed for the total of 11 bursts so far since the project of water channeling from a local reservoir was completed a decade ago.

Pang Jiayu, who was acting as mayor and Party chief of Baoji from 1997 to 1999, was widely blamed for dereliction of duty as he was in charge of the water channeling project.

The Shaanxi provincial committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) has criticized Pang for dereliction of duty that led substandard pipes to be used.

Pang was jailed for 12 years for corruption by a court in June.

The project experienced three pipe bursts in 1998, the year when the project was constructed. It saw two recent pipe bursts on Dec. 4 and Dec. 10 this year. During a burst in 2005, water gushed to seven meters high.