About 8,000 stranded cargo ships and boats on a river course connecting Zhejiang Province to Shanghai will be dispersed in three days, local shipping administration officials said Wednesday.

The river course has been reopened Wednesday after a 14-days' closure due to high water levels.

The bottleneck on the Changxing-Huzhou-Shanghai river course, the worst in a decade, extends 40 km.

"We plan to disperse about 3,000 ships a day. The river course will resume in three days," said Zhou Shiquan, chief of the maritime affairs section of Huzhou Ports and Shipping Administration.

Until now, the water level between upstream and downstream was less than 30 cm, and the water speed was 5 km per hour. The speed is safe enough for empty ships to sail, but slightly faster for loaded cargos.

Huzhou Ports and Shipping Administration will try to disperse the empty boats first, an official from local shipping administration said.

Among the stranded ships, about 6,000 are empty and another 2,000 are loaded.

Typhoon Morakot dumped torrential rains in the area, causing flooding on local rivers and lakes.

The river course is 145 km long and carries 80 percent of coal used for generating electricity in Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Shanghai.

(Xinhua News Agency August 19, 2009)