About half of the 2,125 reservoirs damaged in last May's massive earthquake in southwest China's Sichuan Province can be repaired this year, a water resources official said on Thursday.

Leng Gang, director of the Sichuan water resources department, said the provincial government would spend more than 37.7 billion yuan (US$5.5 billion) this year to fix 1,000 damaged reservoirs and 378km of embankment.

The projects "will solve drinking water problems for 5 million people," he said.

Leng said reservoir reconstruction was scheduled for completion by the end of next year.

He also said the agricultural province lacked sufficient drinking and irrigation water even before the 8.0-magnitude quake. For example, only 55 percent of its arable land was effectively irrigated.

Sichuan planned to increase reservoir storage capacity by 4.5 billion cubic meters by 2012, from the current 10.5 billion cubic meters.

Sichuan had endured a winter drought, with average precipitation 50 percent less than a normal year, according to provincial meteorologists. Southern Sichuan also had a rare heat wave Monday, with a high temperature of 36.7 degree Celsius.

Leng warned that the drought would mean losses of spring crops.

(Xinhua News Agency February 19, 2009)