Heilongtan Reservoir 黑龙滩

About Heilongtan Reservoir

The Ministry of Ecology and Environment records the reservoir as covering a water surface of 23.6 square kilometres with a total storage capacity of 360 million cubic metres. Renshou County's profile of Heilongtan Town gives the same water area and volume and adds 85 islands scattered across the lake, more than 310 kilometres of shoreline, and irrigation duty for 1.2 million mu of farmland. The town around the lake lies in the middle section of the Longquan mountain range on the edge of the western Sichuan plain, hill country between 400 and 800 metres, 16 kilometres from the Renshou county seat, 20 kilometres from the Meishan urban area and more than 60 kilometres from Chengdu.

Sichuan Online's account of the reservoir's origins describes several hundred thousand people from Renshou going out to the construction site with hammers, hoes and carrying baskets and cutting a diversion-and-storage irrigation scheme out of the hills, one that carried Dujiangyan water over the Longquan range to the hill country of south-eastern Sichuan. A scenic area was established around the reservoir and approved in 1986 among Sichuan's first group of provincial-level scenic and historic areas; the reservoir was listed as a Meishan drinking-water source in 2003 and as a nationally important drinking-water source in 2011, and in 2019 the National Forestry and Grassland Administration designated it a national wetland park. In a disclosure dated September 2021 the Ministry of Ecology and Environment reported that the fifth central ecological and environmental protection inspection team had found property development around the reservoir encroaching on its ecological space and damaging the water-source environment.

What to look for

• The islands: Renshou County counts 85 of them scattered across the lake's 23.6 square kilometres of water.
• The shoreline, which the county records at more than 310 kilometres around the lake.
• The hill setting of Heilongtan Town, in the middle section of the Longquan range with ground between 400 and 800 metres.
• The lake's place in the Dujiangyan system, which Sichuan Online describes as carrying Dujiangyan water over the Longquan range into the hills of south-eastern Sichuan.
• The wetland-park designation given to the reservoir by the National Forestry and Grassland Administration in 2019.

Location & getting there

Getting to Heilongtan Reservoir

Confirm the visitor entrance and which boat or walking routes operate on your date. Rainfall, water levels and weather can change access.

• Search for 黑龙滩 with 眉山市 and 仁寿县.