The East China metropolis will renovate 80,000 old-type toilets, each with a 9-litre cistern, in an effort to help relieve the city's water shortage.

Zhou Ya, the chief economic engineer in charge of the city's reform and development, made this remark at a press conference yesterday.

Shanghai now has 600,000 old-type toilets, most of which flush 13 to 15 litres of water each time, Zhou said.

Over the past three years, the city has renovated about 50,000 sets with more water-saving technologies. This has helped the city save 2.1 million cubic meters of water at a cost of 4.05 million yuan (US$499,000).

Zhou said if all the old sets were updated, the city would save 8.76 million tons of water each year. That is equivalent to the city's peak-time daily water consumption, and the money saved is the same as the cost of building a new medium-sized water plant.

The city will continue to promote the use of used water, along with rain and river waters. The city will also speed up closure of deep wells and strictly control further tapping of underground water.

In addition, Zhou said Shanghai will pay more attention to 500 enterprises each of which consumes at least 5,000 tons of standard coals each year.

The city will help them renovate and scrap high-consumption facilities and close those with heavy pollution but poor profits.

Zhou also said the city will quicken its steps to scrap high-consumption and heavily-polluting old vehicles, first in governmental organizations and public transport systems.

Also, the city plans to build 20 to 30 projects with solar energy systems and 130,000 to 150,000 kilowatt wind power stations in the suburbs.

(China Daily September 1, 2005)