The past of Nongfu Spring’s factory construction： Why should we care where the water comes from？

　　Catching up on the e-commerce promotion day, entering the store of Nongfu Spring, consumers can find packaged drinking water that is suitable for almost all life scenarios. Large packaged water suitable for daily use by families, low-sodium light mineral natural water suitable for infants and young children, tea lovers like to make tea, and lithium-containing natural mineral water suitable for people with brains. These drinking water may come from the Mohe River in the Great Khingan Mountains in the north, from Wanlv Lake in Guangdong in the south, or from the towering and dangerous Mount Emei or Fanjing Mountain in the south.

　　Since it announced in 2000 that it would only produce natural water, Nongfu Spring has established 11 water sources across the country in more than 20 years. It takes years for each water source to be discovered to build a factory and put into production. The infrastructure center of Nongfu Spring has also developed from five or six people at the beginning to nearly 100 people now. This group of human translators have crossed the mountains, walked into the Linhai snowfield and arrived at the foot of Tianshan Mountain, practicing the concept of "natural and healthy" in an almost solitary way. Times can be fast, and tap water is indeed very convenient, but Nongfu Spring has turned remote natural water sources into convenient bottled water and transported it to consumers across the country.

　　In the Northeast, challenges in extreme weather

　　How would an employee who has been involved in almost all the factory construction evaluate the factories in the various water sources of Nongfu Spring?

　　"Northeast China is the hardest, the mountains are the hardest," is Li Qiang, director of the design department of the infrastructure engineering center, summing up the history of Nongfu Spring’s factory construction. In 2000, Li Qiang entered Nongfu Spring, except for the Qiandao Lake Jiande factory that had been built at that time, he has participated in every factory in Nongfu Spring since then.

　　Li Qiang’s first water source construction project was in (). In 1999, Fang Qiang, a water explorer at Nongfu Spring, discovered high-quality mineral springs in Jingyu County, Changbai Mountain. This county seat, which was later widely known as "mineral springs", was still a backward and remote place at that time. Later, 47 high-quality mineral springs were found in Jingyu County, including 5 springs with a daily upsurge of more than 10,000 cubic meters. After continuous testing and tracking of water sources, Nongfu Spring was convinced that the mineral springs here are high-quality, pollution-free, and suitable for long-term drinking. Natural water sources.

　　But even so, Nongfu Spring, which decided to build a factory in the mountains, became an "outlier" among its peers. Around 2000, most domestic drinking water companies focused on producing purified water, which had no requirements for the source of water. They only needed to build factories around big cities and filter urban tap water. Nongfu Spring has gone to a road of high cost, long cycle, difficult and even "miserable" to build a factory.

　　Li Qiang and his colleagues still remember that when they first came to Jingyu County, they stayed in the only hotel in the county seat at that time, and rode the tricycle "upside down donkey" to the construction site every day. "Northeast China is so cold in winter," Li Qiang, a Zhejiang native, felt the biting chill that spread from the soles of his feet for the first time. Perhaps in order to take care of these distant guests, the tricycle master even lovingly hung a few pieces of cloth to protect them from the wind.

　　Why go to Changbai Mountain in winter? Li Qiang explained that these are the preparations before the construction of the factory. In the northeast, due to the weather, the construction takes place from April to October, during which there is no freezing. If you come to prepare in summer, the construction time of the factory will be delayed by another year. The subsequent Changbai Mountain Fusong factory took seven years from the discovery of water sources in 2008 to the completion and production in 2015.

　　In 2014, Nongfu Spring found another natural cold mineral spring in Mohe, Daxing’an Mountain, Heilongjiang Province. This made the staff of Nongfu Spring’s infrastructure department excited and uneasy. Even more demanding than Changbai Mountain is that the Mohe area has only 83 frost-free days throughout the year, and the recorded extreme low temperature has reached minus 53 degrees Celsius.

　　Wu Chengfu, civil engineering project manager at the Nongfu Spring Infrastructure Engineering Center, recalled that although construction started in May, ice residue could barely be seen in the soil. In Mohe, permafrost cannot be bypassed. The permafrost is divided into seasonal permafrost and permafrost layer. The thickness of the seasonal permafrost can reach 3 meters, which will melt in summer. If the foundation is laid on it, it will be dangerous in summer. After many expert arguments, Wu Chengfu and his colleagues decided to pay a lot of cost to replace the seasonal permafrost. It was only by layering and pressing other stones that the foundation problem of the factory was solved.

　　Generally speaking, the water extraction project and the construction of the production site are carried out simultaneously. In Mohe River, the water is drawn by drilling wells. In winter, the underwater freezing depth of Mohe is more than 60 meters. This means that the water extraction wells have to be drilled deeper and the water is pumped up through pumps. The difficulty faced by the water extraction engineering team is that the water extraction and pumping must be successful at one time, and at the same time, the pumps must be prevented from freezing. To this end, the water intake engineering team installed insulation rooms at each wellhead.

　　However, in extremely cold weather, accidents cannot be avoided. When Hou Xiaochuan, a senior project manager of water supply and drainage, was debugging the equipment not long ago, he encountered a situation where the water intake well was frozen. When he found out, the pump had been stopped for an hour, and the wellhead was completely frozen. After re-debugging the pump, the water pressure in the well increased, and the well water gushed like a volcanic eruption, spewing more than a meter high with ice slag. Hou Xiaochuan and his colleagues at the Mohe factory were drenched in water. At that time, the temperature in Mohe was already more than minus 30 degrees Celsius. Several people came out of the insulation room, and the biting cold of the well water in the wind did not happen. It turned out that when he went outside, the wet clothes froze directly into ice shells, but it played a windproof role. After they got in the car, the ice shell began to melt. After they got out of the car and took a few steps, the ice clothes that had just melted began to freeze again. It was not until they returned to the room that the hard ice shell all melted.

　　Although the construction process is very difficult, everyone is relieved that the drinking water produced by Changbai Mountain and Mohe is very unique. The natural spring water of Changbai Mountain is from the meltwater of the snow mountain through the dissolution, mineralization and transportation of underground volcanic rocks and basalts for 60 years, removing impurities, and the taste is clear. The low-sodium light mineral spring from Moya Spring is rare in the world. The natural snow mountain mineral water Changbaixue and Nongfu Spring Maternal and Infant Water, which pioneered domestic categories, both come from Changbai Mountain. And Mohe produces natural lithium water rich in lithium.

　　In the mountains, everything has to slow down

　　"The time in the mountains in the south is different from that in the northeast." Wu Chengfu saw the difference between building a factory in the mountains and building a factory in the northeast. This is also Li Qiang’s view. In the northeast, you have to race against the weather and time, while in the rainy jungle in the south, everything has to slow down.

　　With the progress of water source exploration work, Nongfu Spring has established many water sources such as Mount Emei, Mount Taibai, Mount Fanjing and Mount Wuyi one after another. In Li Qiang’s opinion, it is difficult to build factories in mountainous areas due to the terrain and environment. Taking Mount Emei as an example, the production base is 790 meters above sea level, and the water source is another 300 or 400 meters higher. Facing the steep mountain, large modern engineering equipment cannot be used, and everything can only be returned to its original capacity.

　　Nongfu Spring’s Mount Emei water source has two water intakes, and invited tenders to choose a local construction company. "After completing the first part of the project, the budget exceeded the standard." Li Qiang recalled that when making the budget, everyone thought that the cost of cement was 50 yuan a bag. During the actual construction, it was found that it was necessary to manually carry cement up the mountain. "The cost suddenly increased, and the worker carried the cement up the mountain for 50 yuan," and a worker carried it up twice a day, and the construction period was abruptly lengthened.

　　To build a factory in the mountains, it was necessary to transport all kinds of building materials and tools to the mountains, and some of them were transported by mules. A water pipeline usually weighed more than 600 catties, and it was necessary to lay a slide similar to a ladder in advance on the mountain without a road. Sometimes the slope could reach 45 ° -50 °, and it required five or six people to tie the pipe with a rope and pull it up the mountain together along the slide. It took more than half a year to transport the building materials alone.

　　More than 200 days of the year in Emei are cloudy or rainy, with abundant rainfall. The foggy and rainy weather made it difficult for those involved in the construction of the factory. Wu Chengfu recalled that at that time, it would rain when it was dry. "The earthworks could not encounter rain. When it rained, we could only stop work. When the rain stopped, the water was drained and then started again." In this way, from finding water sources to developing and building factories and putting them into production, Nongfu Spring employees spent five years at Emei Mountain.

　　After the production base and the water intake pipeline are completed, there is still a debugging process. At the Taibai Mountain factory in Shaanxi Province, the distance between the water intake and the production base is 23.5 kilometers, which is the length of the water intake pipeline. Li Qiang and Hou Xiaochuan inspected and debugged every part of the pipeline. Afraid of missing details, they could only walk. A round trip is 47 kilometers, which is equivalent to a marathon. "I left at 8 am and came back after 5 pm." Li Qiang described the state at that time, returning to the place where I lived, lying down and not even wanting to eat. Thinking of continuing to check the next day, the mood is even more painful. What is painful and happy is that after inspection, they found that every part of the pipeline met the standards.

　　Employees who had participated in the construction of mountain water sources generally believed that the days in the mountains were slow, slow in the long construction period, and slow in everything returning to the original, which was what they had to face. From the day they decided to produce only natural water and natural mineral water, it was destined that Nongfu Spring would have to take a difficult and long road.

　　B-side "Porter": Become a protector of nature first

　　If the mountains are just a natural barrier that has to be faced, then the meticulous environmental protection rules and the reverence for every plant and tree are the "troubles" that Nongfu Spring has actively found for himself.

　　"How difficult can it be to install a water pipe?" Before entering Nongfu Spring, Hou Xiaochuan had taken it for granted. After all, he had dealt with pipelines a lot, and had done many municipal projects before, all of which involved the design and installation of pipelines. On the second day of joining the job, Hou Xiaochuan was dispatched to the project site. After arriving at the construction site, he realized that the water pipes in Nongfu Spring were different from those he had come into contact with before. Due to the concept of "protective development", Nongfu Spring has higher requirements for water pipe materials, and in the complex ecological environment, there are many regulations that need to be followed.

　　"When we start designing water pipelines, we have to consider the surrounding environment as an important factor," Hou Xiaochuan said. The mountains are full of trees, no one has been there, and naturally there is no road. Hou Xiaochuan and his colleagues can only plan the pipeline laying plan under the guidance of local guides. The water pipeline of Fanjing Mountain is 14 kilometers long and needs to be climbed over two mountains, one high and one short. For environmental reasons, they cannot move the mountain or dig tunnels, but can only choose to use shelves to support the pipeline. If you stand on a higher mountain overlooking the water intake pipes of Nongfu Spring, you will find that most of them are curved, and the entire route is like a snake. In order to adapt to the original terrain, not only the distance and materials used have been greatly increased, but also the later maintenance has become difficult.

　　In the factory being built in Shanglin, Guangxi, the principle of "not moving a tree" is also adhered to. In order to bypass the trees, the pipeline has to be cut shorter, and then the pipeline is buried 1.8 deep underground, removing 0.6 meters in diameter, leaving 1.2 meters of covered *** grass and trees to grow. In addition, the pipeline material and connection method must also meet environmental protection requirements. In the forest, all construction materials are made of anti-corrosion and environmentally friendly materials, which cannot affect soil, vegetation and water sources. Therefore, Nongfu Spring uses PE pipes. The connection method also uses hot melt instead of welding to avoid open flames.

　　"Before each project is designed, the government will invite a third-party authoritative organization to conduct an environmental assessment, which takes three or four months, including checking the surrounding flora and fauna," said Liu Hong, a staff member of the Shanglin project team at Nongfu Spring. After the factory is put into operation, there is also a continuous protection principle. As early as after the completion of the Jingyu production base in Changbai Mountain, at the initiative of Nongfu Spring, the local government established a 10-square-kilometer water source protection zone around the Nongfu Spring water source, which is the first mineral water source protection zone in China built according to international standards. The water sources of other drinking water companies that have built factories in Jingyu in Changbai Mountain since then are also in this protection zone.

　　In addition, there is a great difference in the amount of water in the dry and wet seasons of mountain springs. When there is abundant rainfall in summer, the amount of water is sufficient, which also corresponds to the peak consumption season. In autumn and winter, the opposite is true. In order to protect the water source, the water intake pipes of Nongfu Spring will be equipped with ecological flow holes, which are lower than the water intake pipes. When the water volume is insufficient, the water intake pipes will first stop, and the water will flow downstream along the ecological flow holes to ensure ecology.

　　"In times of drought, we would rather not fetch water." Although Hou Xiaochuan and his colleagues had heard the slogan "Nature Porter" countless times before joining the job, in fact, Hou Xiaochuan and his colleagues were first and foremost protectors of nature.

　　After 15 years in the company, Wu Chengfu only spends one to two months a year at the headquarters, most of his time on projects. He has a deep understanding of protecting the environment, "Although engineering technology has advanced a lot now, and all kinds of machinery are available. But sometimes these traditional methods are more environmentally friendly, even if it is slower and more expensive, but there are some things you must be in awe of, right?"