One of the 150 major national water conservancy projects — the Yangtze River Tongling Reach Comprehensive Regulation Project — broke ground on the 17th on the outer beach of Xinxing Sluice in Tongguan District, Tongling City, Anhui Province. This is the **major water conservancy project to start construction in China in 2024.

The regulation scope of the Yangtze River Tongling Reach Comprehensive Regulation Project extends from Yangshanji in the upper reaches to Digang Town in the lower reaches, with a total length of 59.9 kilometers. The total investment approved in the feasibility study is 1.01 billion yuan, and the total construction period is 21 months.

A responsible person from the relevant department of the Ministry of Water Resources stated that implementing the Yangtze River Tongling Reach Comprehensive Regulation Project is of great significance for ensuring the stability of the river regime in the Tongling reach, enhancing flood control capacity along the banks, protecting navigation conditions, and promoting high-quality regional economic and social development.

The Tongling reach of the Yangtze River has many shoals and branching channels and a complex river morphology, making it one of the key regulation reaches of the main stream of the middle and lower Yangtze River. After years of regulation, the overall river regime of the Tongling reach has been preliminarily brought under control, but factors of instability in the river regime still exist, bank protection works are not yet complete, bank collapse emergencies occur from time to time, and flood control pressure has consistently remained high.