Buildings in Kaixian County of southwestern China's Chongqing Municipality are demolished at 3 p.m. on Thursday, November 15, 2007. [Photo: cqnews.net]

The last county seat to be flooded in the Three Gorges Reservoir, which is set to rise to 175 meters, was demolished at 3 p.m. on Thursday.

Thirteen buildings in the old seat of Kaixian County, under the jurisdiction of Chongqing Municipality, were reduced to rubble within four seconds by a blast of 400 kilograms of dynamite, said Qi Meiwen, director of the Kaixian County Migration Bureau.

In total, 457 households living in the buildings were relocated as of the end of October.

According to Luo Nengping, commander-in-chief for the demolition, the buildings blasted away on Thursday had a combined floor area of 43,000 square meters. They were just a small portion of the 2.5 million square meters of properties that were removed inside the old Kaixian County seat that has existed for 1,800 years.

"We will go all out to make sure that the remainder of the buildings are dismantled and cleared in the first half of next year," said Luo, who added most of the properties listed for demolition had been vacated.

The Three Gorges dam, the world's largest water control facility, was launched in 1993, with a budget of 180 billion yuan (about 22.5 billion U.S. dollars).

Located on the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, the total project comprises a 185-meter-high dam, completed in early 2006, a five-tier ship lock and the reservoir. The project is scheduled to be finished by 2009.

A total of 1.35 million people and 1,500 enterprises in Hubei Province and Chongqing Municipality were required to relocate to make way for the project.

So far, 1.28 million people have resettled at a cost of 53.5 billion yuan (about 6.69 billion U.S. dollars). Most of the 1.06 million resettlers were from Chongqing Municipality.

While more than 200,000 of the 1.28 million-strong resettlers have migrated to the economically-developed areas at the lower reaches of the Yangtze River or on the eastern China regions, the rest have just moved from the low-lying area and resettled on higher ground.

However, officials said an additional 70,000 to 80,000 people still need to be relocated.

Altogether 20 districts, cities and counties in Chongqing Municipality and Hubei Province have been affected by the construction of the Three Gorges Project. It will install at least 26 turbo-generators capable of producing 84.7 billion kwhs of electricity annually alongside flood control benefits after its 2009 scheduled completion.

Kaixian was the last of the eight counties in Chongqing to complete its relocation for the gigantic hydropower project, according to Lang Cheng of the Chongqing Resettlement Affairs Bureau.

To date, a new urban district consisting of buildings with a combined floor space of 3.9 million square meters has been constructed on higher ground, about two kilometers south of the old Kaixian county seat. At least 130,000 displaced Kaixian residents have resettled in the new quarters, including the new urban district, according to Lang.

Three Gorges resettlement officials said they have strictly followed a procedure under which all areas to be inundated by the reservoir have been properly disinfected after the resettlement work was concluded in a bid to guarantee conservation safety.

The State Council recently agreed to put up an extra 10 billion yuan (about 1.25 billion U.S. dollars) for resettlement, which is required to be completed next year.

Wang Xiaofeng, director of the office of the Three Gorges Project Committee of the State Council, insisted that in the future more industries should be developed in a bid to provide the resettlers with work, help them to settle down permanently and to become prosperous, while keeping a firm hand in tackling ecological woes cropping up in the wake of the Three Gorges Project.