The Huaihe River, China's third longest, resumed flowing directly
into the sea through a man-made waterway on Saturday, after being
deprived of its access to the Bohai Sea for about 800 years.
When the sluice gate slowly opened at 11:30 Saturday, the Huaihe
River surged eastward, emptying into the Yellow Sea.
A
ceremony was held Saturday morning to mark the occasion. Officials
from the Ministry of Water Resources and other central government
departments joined tens of thousands of people in the celebration
held in Binhai County, Jiangsu Province, amid deafening banging of
gongs and drums.
The project, built at a cost of nearly 4.2 billion yuan (507
million US dollars) from the government, was completed four years
ahead of schedule.
The newly-dug waterway originates in the Hongze Lake and flows
eastward, emptying into the Yellow Sea, with a total length of
163.5 km. The 750-meter-wide waterway makes it possible for the
Huaihe River to flow into the Sea as it did before.
The project is key to preventing floods on the scale seen every 100
years and benefits 150 million residents living on both banks of
the river, said Lu Zhenlin, director of the Jiangsu Provincial
Department of Water Resources.
Approximately 60,000 people living on or near the construction site
were evacuated from their ancestral homes and settled in fertile
areas.
The Huaihe River runs 1,000 km with a river valley of 270,000 sq.
km. As the Yellow River deviated from its original course and began
to flow over the lower reaches of the Huaihe River, it forced the
Huaihe River to flow into the Hongze Lake. As a result, the Huaihe
River experienced frequent blockage and became highly prone to
flooding.
According to official statistics, the Huaihe River has seen more
than 100 severe floods over the past 200 years. Each flood
inundated over 1,000 towns and counties, leaving tens of millions
homeless.
Zhu Guangqiang, an elderly farmer living on the bank of the Huaihe
River in Jiangsu Province, recalled that his home had been flooded
twice in every three years and that his family lived in poverty.
"The new waterway has reassured my fellow villagers and me that it
is safe to build new homes," he said.
As
one of China's leading grain and coal producers, the Huaihe River
valley turns out 18 percent of China's grain and 15 percent of
coal. The country's three railway arteries, which link Beijing with
Guangzhou, Kowloon and Shanghai, run through the river valley.
Soon after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949,
late Chairman Mao Zedong said "It is imperative to harness the
Huaihe River," making Huaihe the country's first big river to be
controlled. Over the past four decades, the Chinese government has
invested 40 billion yuan (4.83 billion dollars) to build a variety
of reservoirs and 10,000 sluice gates. The total length of man-made
canals is roughly 10 times that of the Suez Canal.
Despite this, the river still overflows its banks at its bends
during major flood periods. The digging of the waterway linking the
river with the sea is considered by experts as the key way out.
Construction of the waterway, built 10 km south of the old channel
of Huaihe, commenced in 1998. It runs parallel to the irrigation
canal built in the early 1950s in the northern part of Jiangsu
Province.
The new waterway runs through a specially-designed elevated culvert
with a flood drainage capacity of 26,000 cubic meters per second.
The waterway will aid in irrigation, shipping and aquiculture. A
number of sewage disposal plants are being built along the
waterway.
(Xinhua News Agency June 28, 2003)