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China's third longest river, the Huaihe, is to resume flowing directly into the sea this year, ending its notorious eight hundred year history of frequent flooding.

A 164-km waterway will be completed towards the end of the year and the river, deprived of its access to the Bohai Sea during a flooding of the Yellow River, will no longer empty into the country's longest river, the Yangtze, but will be diverted mainly into the Yellow Sea by a new waterway.

Historical data show that in 1194 the Yellow River changed its course and flowed over the lower reaches of the Huaihe, reshaping the topography of the Huaihe River Valley and forcing the Huaihe to flow into the Hongze Lake, which empties into the Yangtze, one of the rivers most liable to floods.

The changed course resulted in far more frequent obstruction and flooding of the Huaihe. Between 1400 and 1900 alone, death and destruction was caused by 350 major floods in the valley, three times as many as before the river was stopped from flowing directly into the sea.

Cao Weimin, director of the Huaihe Waterway Construction Administration, told Xinhua Tuesday that the new channel will not only enable the Huaihe to withstand any once a century flood but will also go some way to reducing flooding of the Yangtze.

The digging of the channel began in 1998 at a cost of 4.2 billion yuan (about 506 million U.S. dollars). The project is of special social, economic and environmental significance to China since the people in many areas along the Huaihe River Valley have long been troubled by floods, Cao said.

"It is one of the major achievements China has made in its efforts to improve the environment and maintain sustainable development," Cao said. He was referring to the success in bringing down silt levels of the Yangtze for the first time in 50 years and making water flow again all along the Tarim River in Xinjiang, northwest China, 30 years after the lower reaches had dried up.

More than 60,000 farmers have had to give up their homes to make way for the new channel. One of them, Wang Jiasheng, who has lived in the river valley for more than 60 years, moved into his new residence by the waterway on June 4.

"Huaihe floods have always worried us. The river washed away my house about 20 times," Wang said. "Now I'm relieved, at last."

The 1,100-km-long Huaihe is located between the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. The Huaihe River Valley covers Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu and Shandong provinces, where there is a population of about 150 million. Some 18 percent of China's grain and 15 percent of its coal are produced in the valley.

The Beijing-Guangzhou, Beijing-Kowloon and Beijing-Shanghai railways, all transport arteries, run through the valley.

Soon after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the late Chairman Mao Zedong issued the call that "It is imperative to harness the Huaihe River," making the Huaihe the country's first big river to be controlled. ¡¡

The Chinese government has since spent more than 40 billion yuan (4.81 billion U.S. dollars) on a large number of water conservancy projects on the river, including constructing 2,100 km of canals which combined are 11 times longer than the Suez Canal.

However, the river still overflows its banks at the time of major floods which occur once every fifty years. Digging a waterway linking the river with the sea is considered by experts to be the only way out.

The new channel, built south of the old channel, meets the Huaihe at the Hongze Lake outlet and flows eastward into the Yellow Sea in the county of Binhai, Jiangsu.

The waterway, 750 meters wide and four meters deep, is designed to discharge as much as 26,000 cubic meters of floodwater per second.

"That is sufficient for a smooth drainage of floodwater on the Huaihe," said Wang Yutai, chief engineer of the Huaihe River Water Resources Committee.

Wang said although the construction of the waterway has brought inconvenience to local people, it will not produce other negative impact.

While acting as a flood-relief channel, Wang added, the waterway will serve shipping and irrigation purposes and help restore the valley's environment with the reduction in flooding and waterlogging.

To ensure better control of the river in the future, engineers are now busy establishing a flood data collection and monitoring system along the waterway.