Evaluation plan on rail project OK'd

Ecological protection will be a chief concern in the construction of a railway from Golmud to Wangkun in Northwest China's Qinghai Province.

The railway is a section of the planned Qinghai-Tibet Railway, which is to run 3,000 to 5,000 metres above sea level from Xining, capital city of Qinghai Province, to Lhasa, capital city of the Tibet Autonomous Region on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

The first 845-kilometre section from Xining to Golmud, also in Qinghai, was completed and opened to traffic in 1979.

Construction of the last 1,118-kilometre section from Golmud to Lhasa is scheduled to start this year and the Golmud-Wangkun section is the first phase of the ambitious project.

The State Environmental Protection Administration examined and approved a scheme earlier this month for the evaluation of the project's impact on the environment along the Golmud-Wangkun section.

The scheme emphasized the protection of soil, vegetation, animal and plant resources, and water resources in the region.

The administration requires that garbage generated during the construction be controlled and that special passages be built along the railway to protect animals.

It also attaches importance to protecting frozen earth in the region during construction, said Mu Guangfeng, vice-director of the supervision division of the administration.

Mu said that the frozen earth is sensitive to air temperature changes, as a result of strong sunshine and frequent earth crust movements on the plateau.

But Chinese experts have developed methods to build railways in such an environment to avoid affecting the frozen earth, he said.

Meanwhile, the administration has also recently approved the outline for evaluating how the pipe construction for the West-East Gas Transmission Project will affect the environment.

The 4,000-kilometre pipe, which will start from Tarim in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to Baihe Town in Shanghai, will go through various environmentally sensitive areas.

Stringent measures will be required to protect the environment during construction.

The administration ordered that all possible environmental side effects of the project be studied and measures to avoid or relieve such effects be proposed.

Date: 03/23/2001
QIN CHUAN, China Daily staff