About 330,000 people in Danjiangkou Reservoir area in central China's Hubei Province will be relocated to neighboring localities for China's south-to-north water diversion project, head of the project office Zhang Jiyao said on Sunday.

China's south-to-north water diversion project is designed to divert water from the water-rich south of the country, mainly the Yangtze, or the country's longest river, up to the dry north.

About 230,000 of the local residents in the reservoir area would be relocated to more than 50 nearby counties and cities, Zhang said, adding that the pilot relocation work had kicked off in Hubei since November 25 last year.

The huge water diversion project consists of eastern, central and western routes.

The central route of the project requires construction of an open-cut canal through which water will be drawn from Danjiangkou Reservoir on Hanjiang River, the largest tributary of the Yangtze, before being moved to Beijing and Tianjin.

(Xinhua News Agency May 24, 2009)