Officials are racing against the clock to prepare the Three Gorges Dam area of more than 600 square kilometers, resettling the last of the residents and working to prevent geological disasters.

The dam will be the world's largest hydroelectric power project and is set to start filling up on June 1. Water levels in the reservoir will rise to 135 meters on June 15, which will enable the project to begin to generate power in August. When the gigantic project is eventually finished in 2009, the water levels will be at 175 meters.

The Ministry of Land and Resources is finishing off its US$483 billion project to deal with geological disasters such as landslides.

These disasters could severely pollute the reservoir water and damage newly built cities in the area, said ministry official Jia Jialin.

Nearly 60 per cent of former residents who had to move for the project have chosen to live in local newly built cities, which are mainly at altitudes higher than the old cities but usually not far away from the original sites.

Jia said the ministry has sent officials to Central China's Hubei Province and Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality to ensure that work on 197 locations can finish on time.

The ministry's most recent press release on this issue came out on April 20 and said 64 per cent of the work had been completed after starting in the second half of last year.

However, Jia admitted that time is pressing and funds are limited.

The campaign to resettle a huge number of people, both within the dam area and in more than 20 other areas, reported further success at the weekend.

The central governmental departments involved finished a joint examination on Sunday. They said the dam area under the 135-metre level has been cleared of residents, with 700,000 local people resettled, 12 million square meters of housing torn down, and 4.7 million tons of solid waste properly handled.

A total of 1.2 million people will eventually be moved in the world's largest resettlement project.

Luo Yuanhua, a leading official with the Three Gorges Project Construction Committee, attributed the latest success to careful planning and implementation in a way that respects the interests of local people.

"We have fulfilled our promise to ensure that resettled people get a life at least no worse than their old one, whether they remain in the land where they grow up or go to new cities," he said.

Luo said the government will continue to help resettled people by providing preferential policies, such as by waiving operation tax and providing professional skill training.

Moreover, the living conditions of those resettled have advanced by "half a century", said Luo. All 13 newly built cities in the dam area are modern and well planned, he said.

(China Daily April 30, 2003)