The last county seat to be inundated by water in the Three Gorges reservoir, which is set to rise to a mark of 175 meters, was demolished at 3 PM on Thursday.

Thirteen buildings in the old seat of Kaixian County, under the jurisdiction of Chongqing Municipality, were reduced to rubble within four seconds by 400 kilograms of dynamite, said Qi Meiwen, the director of the Kaixian County Migration Bureau.

A total of 457 households living in Kaixian had been relocated by the end of October, according to Qi.

Kaixian was the last of the eight counties in Chongqing to have completed its relocation work for the gigantic Three Gorges hydropower project.

At the end of 2006, 1.2 million people in central Hubei Province and Chongqing Municipality had been moved out of the reservoir area. However, officials now say an additional 70,000 to 80,000 people still need to be relocated.

The Three Gorges Project, the world's largest water control facility, is located on the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, China's longest waterway and one of the most important inland shipping routes in the country.

(Xinhua News Agency November 15, 2007)