The State Council has approved the plan for the Three Gorges Dam to start, from 15 September, the cycle of storing flood water to the maximum level of 175 metres for the first time. According to the plan, the water level in the reservoir will reach 158 metres by the end of September and 175 metres by the end of October or November. This heralds the completion of the whole project, which has taken 17 years to complete.

During the storage phase, the water level will rise no more than three metres a day, taking into consideration the need to balance anti-flooding, power generation and shipping on the Yangtze. The highest water level reached so far in the reservoir was 172.8 metres last summer, when results showed the dam and hydropower generators functioned well.

China had relocated 1.27m people by the end of June to make way for the dam project, a government official said recently. The relocation task was now “almost complete”, according to Lu Chun, deputy head of the office of the Three Gorges Project Construction Committee under the State Council. A total of 1,632 industrial and mining enterprises have also been shut down or moved, he said.