BEIJING, Jan 20: Chinese engineers blew up buildings in a Yangtze River town on Sunday, beginning a new phase in the world’s biggest water control project, the flooding of the controversial Three Gorges dam reservoir.

Nearby, archaeologists cut away 1,000-year-old stone inscriptions from mountainsides prior to moving them to higher ground to escape the rising waters.

With much of the massive dam already built, Sunday’s demolition and excavation kicked off what the official Xinhua news agency called the “urgent task” of clearing the reservoir bed for flooding, slated to begin in 2003.

The 204 billion yuan ($25 billion) Three Gorges project, which began construction in 1993 and is due for completion in 2009, has been fiercely criticised both at home and abroad as impractical and an environmental disaster.

China says the dam is needed to contain the Yangtze’s devastating annual floods and to meet future power demand.

Critics say the project, first planned decades ago, is not a practical solution to either problem and could cause severe pollution and silting by slowing the river’s flow.

Ahead of the demolition, in densely populated Fengjie town near the city of Chongqing, local television ran week-long programmes explaining how the explosions would be carried out.

“Local people said their normal life has not been affected by the explosions,” Xinhua said on Sunday.

A total of 1.13 million villagers along the Yangtze are to be resettled to make way for the 600-km (365-mile) lake.

National television showed the destruction of the buildings, including a thermal power plant, its 50-metre (164-ft) smokestack and local government offices.

These were the first in a series of scheduled demolitions to clear the waterway for safe passage of ships after the area is flooded. Water levels are set to rise up to 175 metres (575 feet).

“Their demolition means the start of the large-scale relocation of the county,” Xinhua said.

Dam officials will begin to let the water level rise next year, filling a reservoir that will ultimately cover 29 million square metres of land, the news agency said.

By 2009, 115 towns, 1,300 enterprises, 4,000 hospitals and clinics, 40,000 tombs, 100 bridges and 2.87 million tonnes of garbage will be submerged, it said.—Reuters