On November 17, 2025, the adjustment and construction project of the flood control area below Fushan on the main stream of the Huai River officially started. This strategic flood control backbone project spans three cities and three counties in Anhui and Jiangsu provinces, with an estimated total investment of 6.939 billion yuan and a total construction period of 36 months, injecting new guarantee force into the safety of the thousand mile Huai River. As one of the 38 projects to further control the Huai River and 150 major water conservancy projects to be promoted by the state, this project was approved for feasibility study by the National Development and Reform Commission in September 2025, marking a critical implementation stage for the construction of the flood control system in the Huai River Basin.

The tail end of the middle reaches of the Huai River has experienced a significant decline due to the legacy of the Yellow River's capture of the Huai River. The 74 kilometer section from Fushan to Hongze Lake has long been plagued by difficulties in flood discharge and prolonged high water levels, making it a major flood disaster area in the basin in history. The project that started this time directly targets the core pain points and constructs a systematic flood control solution through four key measures: dredging the main stream of the Huai River to ensure smooth flood discharge channels, opening up the Fengtieying diversion channel to create an efficient flood diversion path, building and reinforcing embankments to strengthen safety defenses, and synchronously implementing the management of the Lihe Basin to solve the problem of drainage. Among them, the opening of the Fengtieying River diversion can be regarded as the finishing touch. The entry channel for nearly half of the floods into the lake has been greatly shortened from about 60 kilometers to 7 kilometers, and the designed flood discharge reaches 5450 cubic meters/s, fundamentally breaking through the "intestinal obstruction" of the middle reaches of the flood discharge.

In engineering construction, the construction team always adheres to the concept of scientific argumentation and green development, seeking the optimal solution in multiple constraints. Faced with coordination challenges spanning two provinces, ecological challenges crossing multiple nature reserves, as well as technical difficulties such as expansive soil management and 8-degree earthquake intensity protection, the project team optimized the diversion ratio design through high-precision mathematical models, adopted the strategy of "avoidance, mitigation, restoration, and compensation" to protect ecologically sensitive areas, and built engineering safety barriers with technologies such as cement modified soil replacement and overall framework style gate chambers, achieving coordinated promotion of flood control efficiency, resource conservation, and ecological protection.

As a key project that benefits people's livelihoods, the project will promote the adjustment of the Pancunwa flood control area to a flood control protection area, and the Baojiwei flood control area will be included in the flood control area system around Hongze Lake, completely changing the history of "passive flood diversion" in the areas along the line and providing more security for people's livelihoods and work. After the completion of the project, it will achieve joint scheduling with the second phase of the Huaihe River estuary project, significantly improving the efficiency of flood discharge in the basin, and systematically reducing the pressure of flood control and waterlogging in the middle reaches. It will not only build an indestructible safety defense line for towns and farmland along the line, but also provide stable water conservancy support for high-quality regional economic and social development, helping the Huaihe River Basin to achieve a fundamental transformation from "disaster prevention" to "disaster prevention", and safeguarding the long-term peace of the thousand mile Huaihe River.

This project, which carries the dream of several generations to control the Huai River, is not only a fundamental solution to solving historical floods, but also a vivid practice of practicing ecological civilization construction. With the steady progress of the project, a beautiful picture of "An Lan Huai River, Water Nourishing People's Livelihood" is slowly unfolding, bringing more solid security and a more promising development future to the people in the basin.Editor/Bian Wenjun