The first phase of a route in China's South-to-North Water Transfer Project will start to operate soon, with water testing already being done along the middle route, according to the environmental protection bureau of central China's Henan Province.
The first phase of the diversion system's central route, which runs from Han River's Danjiangkou Reservoir to Beijing, will run after tests have been completed, said a report by the Global Times.
The environmental protection bureau announced on Sunday that Henan's capital of Zhengzhou and 11 other cities have started monitoring the route's water quality.
Among the components being tested are the water's temperature, PH value and the chemical composition index, including those of ammonia, nitrogen, dissolved oxygen and permanganate.
Zhou Wenxian, an official of the provincial environmental protection bureau, said that there have been no reports of any problem during the tests.
Authorities have put in place emergency response mechanism to keep water traveling along the route safe, allowing water found to be polluted removed from the pipelines.
The diversion system's first phase will have 9.5 billion cubic meters of water transferred every year via pipelines and canals.
Although work on the mega-project began in the early 2000s, the idea of the diversion system was first conceived by Mao Zedong in 1952.