Beijing tackles water shortage, pollution

BEIJING -- Beijing will clean all polluted rivers and ponds by the end of this year.

According to the Beijing Water Authority, there were previously about 140 polluted rivers in the city, 57 of which have been cleaned already. The rest will be cleaned by this year end.

Beijing has built or renovated 50 water treatment facilities in the past few years. The city uses over one billion cubic meters of recycled water every year.

Beijing is perennially troubled with water shortage. From 2014, the capital has received more than 3.22 billion cubic meters of water through the middle route of the south-to-north water diversion project.

The diversion route begins at the Danjiangkou Reservoir in central China's Hubei Province and runs across Henan and Hebei provinces before reaching Beijing and Tianjin.

Beijing has appointed more than 5,900 river chiefs, to oversee water conservation at different administrative levels.

A week of saving water began in China began on March 22, World Water Day.