Huaihe River, one of the country's most flood-prone rivers, was dammed at 11:28 am yesterday at a section in the juncture between Huoqiu and Yingshang counties in Anhui Province.

　　The damming is designed to make way for the construction of the Linhuaigang Project, so far the largest water control project on the Huaihe River, the third-longest in China.

　　The dam is one of the 19 key parts of the river management blueprint and has been listed as one of the major projects in the national economic and social development plan.

　　The successful damming, the first on the river, showed that China entered a new stage in harnessing the Huaihe River.With 300 disastrous floods recorded over the past five centuries, the 1,000-kilometer-long river is notorious for its frequent floods, , endangering the lives of local people in the river valley. The area now produces 18 percent of the country's food grain and 15 percent of coal.

　　The Huaihe River flows through four central and eastern provinces - Henan, Anhui, Shandong and Jiangsu - and is located between the country's two longest rivers, the Yangtze and the Yellow.

　　After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the government has been determined to bring the river under control. Since 1950, several thousand reservoirs have been built and dozens of lakes and depressions were turnedsintosflood-storage zones.

　　Covering provinces of Henan and Anhui, the Linhuaigang Flood Control Project will contribute greatly to flood control on the middle reaches of the Huaihe River upon completion in 2005, and the planned reservoir, with a storage capacity of 8.56 billion cubic meters, will enable the region to withstand extremely heavy flooding.

　　The project is designed to protect more than 666,000 hectares of farmland and six million local residents from the threat of floods in this region.

　　Construction of the project was first approved by the State Council in 1958 but was suspended in 1962 due to financial reasons. Construction on the project was restarted in December of 2001.Total investment in the project is estimated to be 2.267 billion yuan (US million).