China relocates 330,000

Authorities have started resettling 330,000 people in central China to make way for a project to divert water from its major rivers across hundreds of kilometres to the booming cities in its arid north.

People in Hubei and Henan provinces are being relocated from their homes near the Danjiangkou reservoir, where a sluice will be built to divert water from the Yangtze river to northern regions, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The resettlement will be completed in 2011, Xinhua said, citing Henan provincial authorities.

The estimated US$62 billion ($83 billion) project will pass by 44 cities, and could be nearly three times as expensive as the Three Gorges Dam, China's last mega-project. Critics have warned that the project will cause environmental damage and still not quench the thirst of China's northern boomtowns.