Beijing's water shortage 'stemmed for now'

A shortage of water for Beijing's residents has been solved for the time being as it has been announced that water will be drawn from a neighbouring province.

Heibei province, which has reportedly been suffering from its own droughts, has been selected to provide extra water to the capital city.

A total of 300 cubic metres of Heibei's water has been allotted to Beijing and will take ten days to reach the city.

Beijing has only seen 75 per cent of the rainfall predicted since 1999, according to calculations.

Luo Yang, chief of Haihe river catchments at the water environment monitoring centre said that the water Beijing is to receive reaches required levels of cleanliness.

"We will monitor the full process of some 30 aspects such as temperature and pH value to ensure the same quality of water being diverted to Beijing as at the sources," he added.

China hit the headlines last week after thousands of babies countrywide fell ill due to ingesting contaminated powdered milk.