The rise of a great power: starting with military industry

Chapter 347 We can't use up a year's supply of water in a hundred years
According to the short-term plan of 20 years and the long-term plan of 50 years.

The recent plan is for Hong Kong's population to be 680 million, requiring 480 billion kWh of electricity and 15 billion cubic meters of water.

The long-term plan is that Hong Kong's population will be 750 million, requiring 530 billion kWh of electricity and 18 billion cubic meters of water.

Such a huge amount of electricity and water consumption cannot be solved by relying solely on Xiangjiang.

The best option is to transfer water and electricity from Guangdong Province.

If it were Hong Kong’s previous power companies and water supply companies, they would not have considered the long term at all and would have only done what would yield the highest profit.

But it is different now. The two original power companies in Hong Kong have been integrated into one China Power Group, and the water supply company has been integrated into one Hong Kong Water Group.

If we want to do it, we naturally need to do it with long-term planning, rather than building again and again, which causes great waste.

There are five large reservoirs in Hong Kong now, namely Tai Lam Chung Reservoir (built in 5), Shek Pik Reservoir (built in 1957), Lower Shing Mun Reservoir (built in 1963), Plover Cove Freshwater Reservoir (built in 1965) and High Island Reservoir (built in 1968). The storage capacity of the "sea reservoirs" - Plover Cove Freshwater Reservoir and High Island Reservoir are both over 1978 million cubic meters. The total storage capacity of Hong Kong is currently 2 million cubic meters, but the rainfall runoff in the catchment area is 3 million m5.86. Even if all the runoff is collected in the storage reservoirs, it will not be able to fill the reservoirs. Even the 1.7 million cubic meters are not enough.

The current Dongshen Water Supply Project only supplies 9000 million cubic meters of water per year, which is still far from enough.

The first thing to be reported was the water supply project.

At this time, a large topographic map with pipelines of different colors on it was hung in the conference room.

"This project is divided into two parts, one is Hong Kong, and the other is Guangdong Province." The chief designer said in Mandarin with a strong Cantonese accent: "Through submarine water pipes, we will connect the raw water systems of the New Territories, Kowloon Peninsula, Hong Kong Island, etc., to achieve unified water supply throughout Hong Kong. When we build new roads, we will build water supply pipelines to connect to newly built residential areas, commercial areas, factories, and step by step to old residential areas, commercial areas and factories."

Introducing the Xiangjiang section, there are two types of pipelines, one is the blue pipeline, which are the pipelines that can be rebuilt, and the other is the red pipeline, which is the existing water supply pipeline and is not easy to be rebuilt immediately.

Hong Kong is different from the mainland. You can't just build pipelines whenever you want. There are a lot of things going on, and these places need to be advanced slowly.

"For the Guangdong part, it is mainly water diversion from the Dongjiang River. The Dongjiang River is one of the three major sources of the Pearl River in Guangdong Province. It is 523 km long and has an annual runoff of nearly 300 billion m. The Dongshen Water Supply Project will bring Dongjiang water from Pengcheng into the Xiangjiang River through an 83-kilometer canal," the chief designer pointed to the map of the Xiangjiang River section.

The entire water supply project is planned and designed based on a long-term annual water supply of 11 billion m.

This requires that the infrastructure be in place, and then only the water supply flow needs to be adjusted without the need for duplicate construction.

For example, what was originally built is not enough.

Each reservoir is designated as a first-level water source protection area, with a defined protection area and protective measures taken to avoid water source pollution.

For example, in Guangdong Province, we are not only considering supplying water to Xiangjiang, but also including supplying water to Pengcheng and Dongguan.

After all, we are using their water, taking their land, and having them organize the construction. It is impossible for them to not give us any benefits at all.

Therefore, in this regard, the near-term plan is to supply 15 billion cubic meters of water to the Hong Kong River annually, and the long-term plan is to supply 18 billion cubic meters of water to the Hong Kong River, ensuring that even if there is no water in the local reservoirs in the Hong Kong River, the water demand of the entire Hong Kong River can be met by transferring water from Guangdong Province.

For the entire project, the designed water supply guarantee rate is 99%, the designed annual water supply capacity is 60 billion cubic meters, and there are 35 large and medium-sized reservoirs.

Some of these large and medium-sized reservoirs are newly built, while others are being expanded.

After the project is completed, the price of water in the Hong Kong section will be about HK$4 per ton, and the annual water fee revenue will be about HK$40 billion.

The entire project is expected to have a payback period of 10 years.

As for Pengcheng and Guancheng, they hold 25% of the shares and adopt the form of dividends, and the water price adopts the form of guidance price. The representatives from various parties in Guangdong Province who attended the meeting were all stunned when they saw this huge project.

Because last year, the entire Guangdong province’s fiscal revenue was approximately 45 billion yuan.

However, the Heung Kong Water Group unexpectedly invested 200 billion Hong Kong dollars in the construction of this mega project.

Is this too much money?

They knew before that Hong Kong was making this plan, but they were not clear about the specifics. They were responsible for providing assistance, assisting in investigating the situation and providing information.

When I hear it now, my soul is trembling.

200 billion Hong Kong dollars, this is simply an astronomical figure.

In the past, they only knew that Hong Kong was rich, but they didn’t have a real feeling of it. But now they truly feel how rich Hong Kong is.

A company can actually come up with 200 billion Hong Kong dollars to build a water diversion project.

"I have a question. Does Pengcheng need so much water?" The person in charge of Pengcheng frowned slightly. "Now our annual water demand in Pengcheng is less than 1000 million tons."

"It's the same for us!" The person in charge of Wancheng also smiled bitterly: "With so much water, how can we possibly use it all? Even if we were given 20 billion cubic meters of water per year, we wouldn't be able to use it all in a hundred years."

Liu Tao laughed in his heart. They could never imagine how fast Pengcheng and Dongguan would develop in the future. In less than forty years, the annual water supply of these two cities would exceed 20 billion cubic meters.

"Comrades, as the saying goes, if you don't plan for the future, you will have immediate worries. We should look at the future from a long-term perspective. We must consider future development. We should plan, design and build now to avoid paying a higher price in the future." Liu Tao said: "This project is led by the Hong Kong Water Group. The losses are also the Hong Kong Water Group's business. You don't need to bear the losses. You just need to cooperate with the construction."

Liu Tao set this planning goal based on historical development.

If the water consumption of Pengcheng and Dongguan is based on the Hong Kong standard, then the annual water demand of Pengcheng and Dongguan in the long term will reach about 70 billion cubic meters.

With so much water, the surrounding cities alone cannot provide enough, and cross-regional water transfer is necessary.

It is obvious that Pengcheng and Dongguancheng do not have the development vision in this area.

Pengcheng is developing very fast now, but a few years ago Pengcheng was still Bao'an County, with a low starting point and weak foundation. A large number of Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and overseas Chinese came to Pengcheng to build factories and took Pengcheng to develop.

In terms of infrastructure, Pengcheng is obviously not prepared for this.

Liu Tao didn't have to think too much. According to the current situation, within two or three years, Pengcheng would suffer from large-scale water and power outages.

The same situation will occur throughout the Yangtze River Delta.

Because the economic development is so rapid, so rapid that it is beyond imagination. Even the most optimistic people did not expect that the economy would develop so fast.

The construction of a large number of factories and the influx of a large number of people have led to a sharp increase in the demand for water and electricity.

The growth in power generation and water supply cannot keep up with the needs of development.

(End of this chapter)