Seventy-five families were moved from three villages in Danjiangkou, in central China's Hubei Province, Thursday to make way for construction of the central route of the South-to-North water diversion project.

Those being relocated, some 333 villagers, will settle in two other cities in the same province. They make up part of the 23,000 people who will be relocated in Hubei and Henan provinces.

Fifty families from Fenggou and Aihe, two villages in Xijiadian Township, involving 232 people, were transported by bus to a resettlement center in the Qujialing administrative district of Jinmen City Thursday. Furniture and luggage were also trucked over, said a source from the Danjiangkou City Government on Thursday.

Twenty-five families involving 101 people moved to a resettlement center at Nancheng, Zaoyang City, the same day.

Zaoyang and Jinmen are prosperous cities in the fertile valley formed by the Hanjiang River, an important tributary of the Yangtze River, the longest in China.

The source of the central route of the South-to-North water diversion project, the Danjiangkou reservoir, sits on the Hubei and Henan border.

In accordance with the construction plan, the dam will be raised so the reservoir's water level will increase from 157 meters to 170 meters, and the reservoir's storage capacity will increase by 11.6 billion cubic meters.

To make way for the central route 330,000 people in Hubei and Henan are to be relocated. And 23,000 of them will be relocated in the two provinces by September.

Some 10,600 residents of Xichuan, a county north of the Danjiangkou Reservoir, will move to 10 newly-built villages in 10 different counties of Henan. Their relocation began on Sunday and is expected to be completed by September 10, according to the relocation plan designed by the project's Henan provincial office.

In Hubei, the 12,000 rural residents requiring relocation, including the 333 who were moved on Thursday, are expected to be resettled by late September.

Apart from Jinmen and Zaoyang, resettlement centers have also been built in Xiangfan, Yicheng and Tuanfeng, all in Hubei, to take people from the reservoir area.

(Xinhua News Agency August 20, 2009)