China will invest 90 million yuan (US$11 million) to restore the ecological system of Dianchi Lake, a famous highland freshwater lake in southwest China's Yunnan Province.  

The project will start at the end of this year according to plan. Of the total investment, one third will be allocated by the Ministry of Science and Technology, while the other two thirds will come from the local governments.

The project will include demolishing some embankments on the lake's bank so as to turn farmland into lake and building an artificial wetland system to help restore the lake's self-purifying function.

The lake is 40 kilometers long and eight kilometers wide with a water storage of 1.5 billion cubic meters. It is the major source of water for industrial and agricultural use in Kunming, capital of Yunnan, and also plays a key role in balancing the city's environment.

In the 1980s, construction of the 1,886-meter-long embankments around the lake cut the ecological relations of the lake with the land, thus destroying its self-purifying system. Rapid development of industry and agriculture around the lake had also worsened the lake's ecological system over the past 20 years.

A large-scale move to curb the pollution in the lake started in the 1990s and more than 3.5 billion (US$422 million) yuan has been used so far.

(Xinhua News Agency June 30, 2004)