Southern track of Three Gorges ship lock to reopen Saturday

Traffic on the southern track of the dual-track ship lock on the Three Gorges Dam will resume on Saturday after a four-month project to raise the lock bed.

The track was scheduled to reopen at 8:00 a.m., said Pan Jiazheng, leader of the quality control panel organized by the China Yangtze River Three Gorges Project Development Corporation.

Repeated tests had shown the engineering, metal structures, machinery and electronic equipment were safe for operation, said Pan, an academician on both the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Engineering.

The project to raise the beds of the uppermost two tiers from 131 to 139 meters on the southern track of the ship lock began on Sept. 15 and the work was completed on Jan.10.

It would ensure safe navigation for ships when the water level behind the dam rises from 135 meters to 156 and finally 175 meters.

During the operation, traffic was restricted to one direction, alternating every 24 hours.

The work to raise the beds of the uppermost two tiers of the ship lock was originally planned to take half a year to complete.

"Some 2,000 workers have been working around the clock to get the job done as early as possible so that shipping business on the Three Gorges Dam area won't be affected too much," said Xing Deyong, the commander-in-chief of the Three Gorges Headquarters of Gezhouba Group.

The northern track of the five-tier lock will be closed for the same operation on Saturday morning. The task is expected to be finished on June 30. In the interim, the shipping capacity will be down by 60 percent.

The Three Gorges Project, the world's largest water control facility, is located on the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, China's longest and one of the most important inland waterways for shipping in the country. It boasts a 185-meter-high dam, which was completed on June 20, 2006.

The lock, 6.4 km long and costing 6.2 billion yuan (775 million U.S. dollars), was built on mountainous terrain on the northern bank and has been the only navigation route past the dam since 2002.

Construction of the lock began in April 1993. Trial operations began ten years later and it became fully operational in July 2004. By Dec. 31, 2005, about 190,000 ships carrying 89 million tons of cargo and more than 1.88 million passengers had passed through the lock.

Source: Xinhua