Measuring water use performance in the cities along China's South-North Water Transfer Project

Due to the construction and operation of China's South-North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP), it is necessary to conduct broader research on the underlying trends and factors of the water-use performance in the SNWTP's cities from the perspective of “resource-economy-environment” system. This paper attempts to identify the optimal paths and measures for improving the water-use performance as measured by the Luenberger productivity indicator and its decomposition. The results show that sewage discharge, free-of-charge water use and leakage are the crucial variables that constitute major contributions to the overall inefficiency value associated with urban water use in the SNWTP. The static efficiencies of water consumption indicate better performance of the cities of the middle route if opposed to those of the eastern route. The results suggest that the cities that receive water from both of eastern and middle routes, have better performance in water use than other cities, while the static efficiency in the other water-consuming areas on the eastern and middle routes do not differ in this regard. The results also indicate that the water-use productivity for the SNWTP follows a downward trend during 2006-2014.