Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous¹ Region has appointed 285 "river chiefs" to protect the valley of the Tarim River, China's longest inland river.

 

新疆维吾尔自治区委任285位“河长”保护塔里木河——中最长的内陆河。

 

The group consists of two regional-, 19 prefecture-, 64 county- and 196 township-level chiefs, according to the regional water resources department.

 

The move answers the central government's call to build a river chief system nationwide amid efforts to tackle water pollution. River chiefs are tasked with resource protection, pollution prevention and control, and ecological³ restoration, and they will be held accountable for environmental damage in bodies of water under their supervision⁴.

 

The Tarim River runs 1,321 kilometers along the rim² of the barren Tarim Basin, a sparsely⁵ populated area about the size of Poland. The river valley encompasses⁶ 144 rivers, covering 1.02 million square kilometers.

 

Xinjiang has added 7 billion cubic meters of water into the dry main stream of lower reaches of the Tarim River in 18 water diversion projects since 2000, making the desert polar forest a tourist attraction.

 

Excessive irrigation in the past used too much water, which caused the river's lower reaches to run dry in the early 1970s, killing⁷ many of the trees in the forest.

 

About 1.2 billion cubic meters of water is expected to be discharged into the valley this year.

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