Shanghai: China's costliest water transport project, a shipping channel dredging program to boost trade in the Yangtze River Delta area, is due to be completed in the middle of this month.??The 12-year program, with a total cost of 15 billion yuan (US$2.42bn), involved a 92.2-km-long, 300-meter-wide shipping channel. The channel starts at Waigaoqiao, in Shanghai, and ends where the Yangtze River enters the East China Sea.??The program has proceeded in three phases since 1998, increasing the depth of the estuary shipping channel from 7 meters to 12.5 meters.??In comparison, a shipping channel dredging project on the Mississippi took 100 years to increase its depth from 6 meters to 10 meters.?
Thanks to the dredging program, the channel at the estuary is able to accommodate, at any time, container vessels each with a capacity of 2,000 to 4,000 teu and 50,000-dwt ships.??It will be also capable of accommodating 6,000 to 11,000 teu container ships and 100,000-dwt vessels at high tide. [10/03/10]?
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