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China Launches Dredging Project on Yellow River
China has launched an ambitious dredging project to lower the bed of the Yellow River.
The first dredger has already started working on the river near this capital of Shandong Province, on the downstream of the river.
Ge Maoshan, an official from the province's Yellow River Authority, said there will be 14 large dredgers working on the river in the first phase of the project.
If the China-made dredgers prove efficient, more will be employed in the project, said Ge.
The enormous amount of silt carried by the Yellow River has been raising its bed over the centuries, forcing people to raise the embankments continuously. In many places, the river bed is several meters higher than the surrounding areas, posing a serious danger in the flood season.
According to experts, silting over the 10 years between 1990 and 2000 has raised the river bed in Shandong by 0.1 meters.
The Chinese Ministry of Water Resources first suggested a dredging project in 1996, but it was not until the disastrous flood in 1998 on the Yangtze River that the central government gave the go-ahead for the project.
Experts say that the dredging project will lower the river bed and ensure smoother drainage of flood waters, while the sand brought up in the process will be used to reinforce the embankments.
The project will also help protect the surrounding farmland, a great amount of which has been destroyed over the past by embankment-building, said the experts.
All the dredgers currently used are made in China. Each one can extract 120 cu m of sand per hour.
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