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Main quake lake flows into man-made sluice channel

MIANYANG (Sichuan Province): The long-awaited drainage of China’s Tangjiashan “quake lake” started on Saturday morning, as its water flowed into a man-made sluice channel.

Experts calculated that the water flowed at seven to eight cubic metres per second on Saturday afternoon, far more than the previous two cubic metres per second before Army engineers blasted off a boulder in the channel.

They calculated that the flow volume had reached two cubic metres per second in the sluice channel.

Rao Xiping, head of the Beichuan hydrometeorological station, said the water level was still rising due to the slowness of the flow into the channel.

The level stood at 740.97 metres above the sea level at 5 p.m., 0.6 metre higher than the time when it started to overflow. “But the dam is safe now,” said Mr. Rao, adding that no more spots of overflowing had emerged and he didn’t think the dam would either collapse or cave-in.

Soldiers are still widening and deepening the sluice channel to speed up the drainage. They were also digging a second sluice channel.

The quake lake was enlarged by 13.5 million cubic metres, and has reached 229.5 million, according to experts at the Tangjiashan quake lake relief centre.

The swollen lake was formed by a massive landslip following the May 12 earthquake that jolted the southwest. It is posing a major threat to 1.3 million people downstream.

Some 600 armed police and soldiers worked for six days and nights to dig the 475-metre channel to divert water. More than 2,50,000 people in low-lying areas in Mianyang have been relocated under a plan based on the assumption that a third of the lake volume breached its banks.

Two other plans require the relocation of 1.2 million people if half the lake volume is released or 1.3 million if the barrier is fully opened.

The swollen quake lake has also put China’s longest oil pipeline at risk.

The pipeline, winding from Lanzhou via Chengdu to Chongqing, was 60 km downstream.

Liu Xiaozhong, director in charge of the pipeline protection work, said the pipeline would not be disrupted according to the work plan on the quake lake.

It has a capacity of transferring 6 million tonnes of oil each year,.

Tthe pipeline provides 70 per cent of oil to Sichuan and neighbouring Chongqing Municipality.

If the line was cut, refined oil in storage could supply Sichuan only for three days, whereas repair work would take 30 days. — Xinhua

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