The largest reservoir in northeast China is short of water as the severe drought persists, local drought relief office said Wednesday.

Water volume of the Hongshan Reservoir, Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, has dropped to a "dead storage level" of 10 million cubic meters, said Xu Xiaoming, director of the Flood Control and Drought Relief Office. The water storage capacity of the reservoir was 2.56 billion cubic meters.

This was by far the lowest level it had been in the past 4 decades and more since the reservoir was built in the 1960s, he said.

Located in the middle reaches of the Liaohe River, one of China's largest rivers, water in the reservoir is used to irrigate about 1.12 million mu of farmland at its lower reaches.

However, the almost dried-up reservoir was not able to provide irrigation water at all, and a large number of fish are dying, he said.

Chifeng City has been suffering from drought for the past ten years, but last year's drought was the most serious and it continued to ravage the region this spring, leaving more than 250,000 people short of drinking water, according to the drought relief office.

So far, altogether 51 mid- and small-sized reservoirs in the city, 62 percent of the city's total reservoirs, had dried up, he said.

The city government has mobilized more than 626,300 people in the drought relief work, with more than 30.33 million yuan (about US$4.46 million) of special-use fund, according to statistics from the office.

(Xinhua News Agency April 21, 2010)