Yellow River Water Unified Dispatch for 25 Years: From Frequent Disruptions to Uninterrupted Flow

The Yellow River, the mother river of the Chinese nation, once faced significant challenges due to its frequent drying up. In 1997, the river dried up for 226 days, leaving the riverbed barren and causing profound impacts. In 1999, the Yellow River Conservancy Commission of the Ministry of Water Resources (Yellow River Commission) initiated unified water quantity dispatching, which has ensured the continuous flow of the Yellow River for 25 consecutive years.

The Heigangkou Headgate Sluice in Kaifeng City, built in 1957, is the first culvert sluice on the southern bank of the Yellow River in Henan Province, designed for irrigation over 660,000 mu (about 44,000 hectares). In 1997, the Yellow River dried up here, leaving the riverbed empty. Today, through scientific dispatching and modern metering facilities, the Yellow River's water resources are utilized efficiently, with a cumulative diversion of 720 million cubic meters, ensuring the economic development of the Kaifeng region.

The Xiaolangdi Water Conservancy Project, a key engineering project for the management of the Yellow River, controls a basin area of 694,000 square kilometers, accounting for 92.3% of the Yellow River basin. In the first half of 2024, Xiaolangdi conducted emergency drought relief dispatching, with a maximum discharge rate of 4,400 cubic meters per second, providing a total of 2.779 billion cubic meters of water, effectively alleviating drought conditions in the middle and lower reaches.

The unified dispatching of the Yellow River's water quantity not only solved the problem of drying up but also achieved functional continuous flow, maintaining the river's capacity for flood and sediment discharge and its ecological corridor function. The precise dispatching of the Xiaolangdi Water Conservancy Project has improved the irrigation guarantee rate for the 4.4 million mu (about 293,000 hectares) of irrigated areas downstream, continuously providing stable water sources for the Yellow River to Tianjin, Qingdao, and Baiyangdian Lake.

The 25 years of unified dispatching of the Yellow River's water quantity have transformed the river from frequent drying up to a continuous flow, providing a solid water resource guarantee for the economic and social development along the Yellow River.