Aksu in Xinjiang building world-class reservoir to optimize water resources

Aksu in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region is making efforts to optimize the use of water resources by building a world-class reservoir project, which aims to reduce droughts and floods and relieve their effects on the local economic development and people's livelihood.

Located in the junction area of Wensu and Wushi counties of Aksu, the Dashixia water reservoir project's construction began in December 2017 and is expected to sluice in October 2025 and complete all the construction work around October 2026.

"This area has very harsh climate and complicated geological conditions, posing great challenges to our work," said Huang Jin, vice-general manager of Xinjiang Gezhouba Dashixia Reservoir Development Co - the company in charge of the reservoir construction work.

He said the project requires high-quality construction because of the height of the dam - with the highest point of the dam designed to reach 247 meters, high flow rate of flood releasing and higher-level earthquake intensity designed to resist. 

To better monitor the quality of construction work and collecting construction data, the company channeled around 30 million yuan ($4.1 million) to build up a smart monitoring system from the late 2021.

"The application of the system can not only help us save human resources cost, but reducing risk of human errors. We can monitor the construction work during the whole process. For example, we can trace the whole process of a dam material from the original mining, transportation and its placement through the system," said Li Jiandong, the company's director of technology management department.

He added that the system is in trial function so far, which will be put into services around October to December.

Seeing the project in smooth operation, the 45-year-old Xu Shumei, a senior technician from the company, feels her efforts and contributions are rewarded.

"I've worked in Xinjiang since 1999 after finishing education in Chongqing, where is also my hometown. And I started to work for the project around four years ago," she said. She is in responsible for quality control, laboratory management and energy saving and emission reduction for the project.

"I've never regretted of serving in this industry, and it may be a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get involved in such a world-class project. But I owe a lot to my daughter and parents who need my care because of my work. My husband is also working in construction industry, and we meet each other like once or twice a year, so we don't have much time companying my daughter," she said.

She said she hasn't taken a leave for more than a year. "My daughter came to visit me during the Spring Festival holiday of 2021. I owe her," she added.

According to the water resources department of the region, the project has attracted investment of around nine billion yuan - with 3.04 billion yuan from the central government, whose capacity is projected to reach 11.7 billion cubic meters and can generate 1.893 billion kilowatt hours per year after finishing its construction.