China has started to build a 67km-long canal from the middle section of the Yangtze River to a tributary that connects with the central route of the country’s south-north water diversion project.

Costing more than Rmb6bn to construct, the project will divert 3.1bn cubic metres of water every year from the Yangtze’s Jingjiang section to the Hanjiang River, a major source of water for north China once the diversion project is complete in 2014.

The water diversion project is designed to divert water from the water-rich south to dry northern cities such as Beijing and Tianjin. The canal is expected to benefit some 8.9m people and 43,000 hectares of farmland in the lower reaches of the Hanjiang.

Once completed, the five to six metres deep canal could be used by 1,000-ton ships, facilitating the transportation of coal from the north to the south, said Xu Shaojun, head of the Hubei Provincial Investigation and Design Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower.