Fenhe Reservoir

Fenhe Reservoir is the largest reservoir in Shanxi Province. It lies north of Xia Shijiazhuang Village in Loufan County. It is 122 kilometres away from Guancen Mountain in Ningwu County, the source of the Fenhe River. The river distance to Taiyuan, the provincial capital, is 95 kilometres, with a straight-line distance of approximately 45 kilometres. It controls a drainage area of 5,268 square kilometres and is classified as a large Grade II multi-year regulation water conservancy project.

The project consists of six components: the main dam, spillway, an 8-metre flood and sediment discharge tunnel, a 4-metre water conveyance tunnel, a 3-metre Yellow River water diversion tunnel and a hydropower station. Its primary functions are flood control, irrigation, and industrial and urban water supply, supplemented by power generation and aquaculture. After the completion of the Yellow River Diversion Project to Taiyuan in November 2003, which began delivering water to Taiyuan, Fenhe Reservoir became the province’s largest surface drinking water source.

Construction of Fenhe Reservoir began in 1958, and it was put into operation in 1961. The main dam adopted an earth-fill structure built with the underwater earth dumping method, a world first. The dam stands 61.4 metres high, with a base width of 485 metres, a crest width of 6 metres and a total length of 1,002 metres. It is reputed as "the second Guanting Reservoir". The highest water level reached 1,127.76 metres in March 1996, and the water storage volume stood at 140 million cubic metres by the end of June 2009.

Fenhe Reservoir safeguards the lives and property of more than 6 million people across 18 counties and districts under four prefecture-level cities in the middle and lower reaches of the Fenhe River. In over forty years of operation, it has successfully contained 13 major floods with a peak discharge exceeding 1,000 cubic metres per second and 33 floods exceeding 500 cubic metres per second. The average annual inflow is 330 million cubic metres, and the average annual water supply reaches 240 million cubic metres, making it the water conservancy hub with the highest surface water resource utilization rate in the province.

Following the launch of the Yellow River Diversion Project to Taiyuan in November 2003, Fenhe Reservoir served as a regulating reservoir for the project. It has regulated a total of 447 million cubic metres of diverted Yellow River water, of which 342 million cubic metres have been supplied to Taiyuan, averaging 57 million cubic metres annually. The economic benefits generated by water supply and flood control have exceeded 10 billion yuan. The reservoir has played a vital role in securing industrial and agricultural water use downstream and protecting people’s lives and property.

The construction of Fenhe Reservoir has also endowed Loufan County with abundant aquatic resources and scenic tourist attractions. Fish inhabiting shallow, middle and deep waters are raised here, including more than ten species such as common carp, crucian carp, yellow catfish, grass carp and giant salamanders, together with plenty of lobsters, turtles, soft-shelled turtles and crabs.

In recent years, Loufan County has carried out large-scale comprehensive improvement, afforestation and landscape enhancement in the Fenhe Reservoir basin and surrounding areas in an effort to build the province’s top county for ecological and environmental protection. Particularly after the municipal government designated Loufan County as an ecological tourism and economic functional zone, the county Party committee and government have further strengthened reservoir management and development. In the future, Fenhe Reservoir will develop into a modern water conservancy hub integrating flood control, water supply and leisure tourism.