GUANGZHOU: This city should put recycled water to better and more extensive use and save more fresh water to overcome water shortages and reduce salt tides, a deputy to the city's legislature has suggested.

In a submission to the city's people's congress, which ended on Tuesday, a deputy from Guangzhou's Yuexiu District, Liu Lianxiang, said the South China city was in a good position to optimize the use of recycled and conserved fresh water.

It will help the city where water is in short supply, especially during winter, to reduce salt tides that have been plaguing it and other cities in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region for the past few years.

"Guangzhou is capable of disposing of 71.34 percent of its residential and industrial sewage, and its daily capacity has reached 1.83 million tons," Liu said.

So instead of pouring recycled water that comes out of sewage-treatment plants into the Pearl River, the cityauthorities can treat and use for it for several purposes, she said, especially because the cost of such treatment is very low: 0.5 yuan (6 cents) a ton.

At present, the city uses only about 10,000 cubic meters of recycled water a day, primarily for watering plants, cleaning roads and flushing toilets around its few sewage-treatment plants. But about 5 million yuan ($641,026) can be saved each year if such water is put to optimum use, she said.

It's high time the city authorities work out a way to put such water to wider use, and took serious steps to promote its use among the public, she said.

She proposed that new key and heavy water-consuming projects be made to install pipelines carrying recycled water.

(China Daily 02/01/2007 page5)