Huaihe River authorities drive flow of new safety measures

To provide a better service, flood and drought relief teams require more information about weather conditions across the river's entire drainage area. In the past, weather reports were produced in accordance with administrative jurisdiction, so provincial centers forecast conditions for cities in the province, while municipal centers covered the conditions in counties.

"It was not scientific, because we know the effect large bodies of water and rivers can have on rainfall," said Wang Dongyong, director of the Anhui Meteorological Center.

In 2005, the China Meteorological Administration established the Huaihe River Basin Meteorological Center, which uses the most advanced technologies and equipment to collect information from across the drainage area, according to Wang.

Based in Hefei, Anhui's capital, the center is staffed by employees of the Anhui Meteorological Center.

In recent decades, 38 large reservoirs and hundreds of small ones, with a combined capacity of nearly 300 billion cu m, have been built in the Huaihe's drainage area.

Authorities have also built outlets to allow water from the Huaihe to run into the Yangtze and the sea. Currently, the majority of the Huaihe's flow enters the Yangtze via Hongze Lake.

An irrigation canal built in recent years in the north of Jiangsu also diverts some of the water to the sea, Wu said.

In 2007, the province completed the Linhuaigang Flood Control Project on the Huaihe's middle reaches, he said, adding that the project is designed to resist once-in-a-century floods.

In that event, the project's dams and reservoir, which has a capacity of more than 8 billion cu m, will be used to cut the flow, allowing the water level in the lower reaches to fall naturally. Later, the contained water will be discharged gradually to ensure no damage is caused to land and buildings along the rest of the waterway.

"We have to be prepared at all times," Wu said.