Water projects stand test of strongest floods in 20 years
Chenglingji is where the Yangtze meets Dongting Lake.
"The target was met. The highest water level at the station during the time only reached 34.34 meters," Chen Jionghong said, adding that a rough calculation by the commission showed that the water level could have exceeded 35.1 meters without the reservoirs' help.
If the water level at the station had exceeded the maximum level for dikes and kept rising, nearby flood detention areas would have had to be used. That would have necessitated the evacuation of a large number of people from areas to be inundated, he said.
"Our work is people-centered. That is to say, we have to guarantee the safety of people's lives and property," Chen Jionghong said.
Record high water levels at some hydrological stations at Poyang Lake, the country's largest freshwater lake, were cited by Reuters to support the claim that the Three Gorges Dam had failed to play its role in mitigating floods.
But Chen Guiya said that while the Hukou hydrological station, where the Yangtze meets Poyang Lake, is far from the Three Gorges Dam, calculations by the commission showed that the reservoirs in the upper and middle reaches of Yangtze had helped reduce the water level there by 0.2 meters during the first flood of the year.
