"The air is really thin and we have to climb out for fresh air every hour," he said.

He realized they had to speed up operations as the lives of more than 3,000 people were depending on this pumping station.

With rich water sources found underground in karst areas, the government is shifting its focus on constructing water projects.

Reservoirs will be moved from high ground, where they collect rainfall, to lower regions to access groundwater.

After water shortages in 2010, Yunnan introduced the "five smalls" water conservation project, comprising small water vault, tank, pumping station, pond and channel.

In 2011, the province built 450,000 "five smalls" projects.

"That this year's drought is similar to 2010's is due to an historic lack of water conservation projects in Yunnan," said Zheng Baohua, director of the Rural Development Institute of Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences.

He said as a mountainous region, Yunnan normally receives less funding for large- and medium-size water projects from the central government, and the level of construction remains quite low.

"Yunnan increased construction of water facilities' over the past two years," he said. "But due to a consistent lack of rain, the newly built projects couldn't perform to their best, so this region is still facing the problem of weak facilities."

Ma Hongqi, of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that building a water diversion project in the middle of the province is one way of solving drought problems.

"Building small water conservation projects is okay but can't solve the fundamental problem," he said. "Directing water from the Yangtze River in northwestern Yunnan to the central part would effectively solve the water problem in six cities in central Yunnan."

Earlier this month, Qin Guangrong, secretary of the Yunnan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, said at a meeting that the government would spend around 600 million yuan on water diversion projects in 2012.