More than 760 residents in central China began to move to their new homes Tuesday, making way for the giant south-to-north water diversion project.

The farmers took more than 100 trucks and buses to move from their mountainous hometown in Junxian County in the Danjiangkou Reservoir area to the Denglin Farm in Yicheng City, 300 km away in the fertile valley formed by the Yangtze's tributary Hanjiang River.

The relocation started at 6:00 AM.

Sitting on the border of central China's Hubei and Henan provinces, the Danjiangkou reservoir is the source of the central route of the water transfer project.

By 2014, 330,000 migrants in the two provinces were expected to be relocated for the multi-million-dollar project which was designed to channel water from the southern region, mainly the Yangtze, China' s longest river, up to the parched north, including Beijing.

This is China's largest resettlement project following the Three Gorges Project. From 2010, more than 100,000 people would be relocated every year until 2014, relocation officials here said.

The government has prepared new houses for the relocation and promised to compensate for the properties including land, trees and farms, villagers in Junxian said.

The State Council, China's cabinet, approved the project in 2002 after a half-century of debate.

(Xinhua News Agency December 8, 2009)