The Yangtze-Hanjiang Water Diversion Projects scheduled to work on September 26th after 4 years of intense construction. But in order to relief the severe drought in the middle and lower reaches of Hanjiang River, it has already gone into operation ahead of time on August 8th. Due to the water flow of the Three Gorges exceeded 42000m3/s recently, resulted the intake water stage of Yangtze-Hanjiang Water Diversion Projects reached at 38.5 meters and the stage between control sluice and levee section of Jingjiang River kept at 29.1 meters. The high water level difference will influence the operation of control sluice, so the stage will remain at 31 meters all the year round after the project gone into operation officially.
　　
The Yangtze-Hanjiang Water Diversion Projects is the largest water resource allocation project in Hubei province, and is one of the projects aimed to harness the middle and lower reaches of the Hanjiang River. The main goal of the project is to make up for water loss in sections of the Hanjiang River below Xinglong caused by Phase I of the Middle Line of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project. The channel of the project extends for 67.23 kilometers, and it took four years to make it. The design flow is 356m3/s and it can reach 500m3/s maximum, the total annual water transfer quantity would achieve 3.7 billion cubic meters, about 3.1 billion cubic meters of water would be diverted to the Hanjiang River and the rest of 0.6 billion cubic meters of water to the Jingdong River.