Officials are working to provide safer lives for people in a flood-prone area that straddles four provinces. Zhu Lixin reports from Fuyang, Anhui.

Wang Pinsan stood in front of a row of two-and three-story houses built on land that stands a few meters higher than regular farmland in Wangjiaba village, Funan county, in the eastern province of Anhui.

"When flooding occurs, these houses, most of which have been rebuilt in recent years, become islands that protect our lives," Wang said.

The 65-year-old has experienced that problem many times. In fact, his family did not dare build good houses until about 10 years ago, when the local government rebuilt the village.

Several hundred meters from the village, which is prone to flooding, are the Huaihe River, which is about 1,000 kilometers long, and the Wangjiaba sluice gates, a major flood diversion project located near the confluence of the Huaihe and two other rivers.

Alongside the sluice gates is a scarlet inscription written by Chairman Mao Zedong that reads, "The Huaihe River must be harnessed well."

Thanks to measures taken by the government, Wang is no longer frightened of floods, even though the memories are still fresh.

Disasters

When the water level breaches the banks of the Huaihe in Funan, authorities have the option of opening the sluice gates - built in 1953 - to let the excess flow into a 180-square-kilometer basin called the Mengwa Flood Diversion Area, administered by Fuyang city and home to more than 195,000 people.

The area, which can hold nearly 700 million cubic meters of water, has been flooded deliberately 15 times in 12 nonconsecutive years.

"The water covers everything. During flooding in 1991 and 2003, I could barely see the roofs of the houses," said Wang, adding that the gates were opened twice in 1991 and 2003 - when the water receded temporarily before rising again - and once in 2007, the last time the area flooded.

Located about midway between the Yellow and Yangtze rivers, the country's two longest watercourses, the Huaihe, along with the Qinling Mountains to the west, is regarded as the dividing line between North and South China.

It runs through Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu and Shandong provinces.

Rising in the mountains of Henan, the upper section runs for 364 kilometers and drops 178 meters over that distance, according to the Huaihe River Commission of the Ministry of Water Resources.

By contrast, the middle reaches, mostly in Anhui, lie between the Wangjiaba sluice gates and Hongze Lake in Jiangsu. The stretch is 490 km long and it drops a mere 16 m, according to the commission, which was founded in 1950 and is headquartered in Bengbu, a riverside city in Anhui, employing more than 3,000 people.

"It was founded because harnessing this long river required the coordinated efforts of governments in different areas," said Wu Xu, a commission expert.

The Huaihe historically drained directly into the Yellow Sea, but floods have changed its course so much that it is now a major tributary of the Yangtze.

For thousands of years, the Yellow River to the north repeatedly altered course southwards to run into the Huaihe, creating new highlands and lakes, including Hongze Lake, the largest body of water in the Huaihe's drainage area. "The bed of Hongze Lake is actually higher than the bottom of the Huaihe," Wu said.

Floodwater runs rapidly along the upper section in Henan into Anhui, but it is unable to pass easily through the middle reaches and into the Yangtze, he added.

The river's total drainage area covers 270,000 square kilometers - about the size of New Zealand - and straddles all four provinces, with a total population of 171 million, about half that of the United States.

"The population density makes evacuation hard; sometimes the floods came so quickly that we didn't have time to move people out," said Yang Wenjiu, retired standing deputy head of the Funan government.

The 1991 floods are recognized as the most severe on the Huaihe since 1961, when the country started keeping records. They affected 54 million people in the four provinces, and resulted in a combined direct economic loss of 34 billion yuan, or 20 percent of the entire drainage area's annual GDP.

More than 1 million residents in the flood retention areas in Anhui were moved from their homes as a result of the flooding, according to the provincial government.

The authorities had two options: to allow the floods to expand to their full extent, or to open the sluice gates and let the Mengwa diversion area bear the brunt of the problem.

"If we didn't open the gates, the people along both the upper and lower reaches of the river would suffer the biggest losses," said Lu Haitao, director of the Wangjiaba sluice gates administration office.

Wu, the river commission expert, said, "The worst-hit places would be the lower reaches; the areas that were more economically developed and home to many important facilities, including railways, coal mines and factories."

Lu said, "The Mengwa people understood the situation, and the country was proud of them for that."

The gates were opened and the land was flooded. However, people in the Mengwa area did not receive compensation for their losses until 2003. As a result, the central government ordered that villagers should receive compensation as quickly as possible if the same decision had to be taken in the future.

Battle for land

In May, Bengbu hosted a national flood control conference, where officials and experts warned of a growing possibility that severe flooding could occur on the Huaihe this year.

Despite the warning, Wang and his fellow villagers have sown crops on the land between the riverbank and the sluice gates, even though they know the area will be the first to be hit by any floods.

Wang's family of six farms less than 3,000 square meters of land in the Mengwa area.

Data from the provincial government show that each of the basin's residents farms an average of less than 700 sq m of land. In the first nine months of last year, more than 8,600 villagers earned less than 3,000 yuan, so the local government provided subsidies and employed poverty alleviation measures.

When floods come, the people withdraw, only returning when the water recedes.

Though the local government has moved thousands of villagers from the flood retention area to safer places, huge challenges remain. Some villagers still live in low-lying areas, while some of the safe places are so crowded that people need to be relocated.

Safe places include the riverbank and new villages built on high, artificial platforms inside the basin, as well as urban areas.

In September, the provincial government issued plans for safety measures for people living along stretches of the Huaihe in Anhui.

It plans to move more than 640,000 people from their homes before the end of next year, and either rebuild their houses in the basin or on the riverbank, or relocate them to towns and cities.

In total, the project will cost about 32 billion yuan ($4.6 billion), according to government estimates.

However, not only are the villagers unwilling to leave their homes, but the document also acknowledges several other problems.

For example, the compensation being offered is relatively low, compared with similar projects, and while villagers will be given new homes free of charge, they will only receive about 16,000 yuan each for leaving their old homes.

To boost the relocation program, the Funan government has promised to help at least one member of each rural household find a job, meaning families will not be reliant on farming.

Another difficulty lies in the construction of safety projects, because they require more land, a commodity that is severely limited.

Attempts to solve the Huaihe River's problems also include improving the weather forecasting system.

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.