Three weeks ago, the Yellow River breached several sections of these dykes in Lankao Country. Heavy flooding downstream has been the result.

They're called production dykes. Local farmers make them to protect their land from the river. This is the cause of the current flooding in eastern China's Shandong Province.

Bao Zijian is a farmer. He says he first saw production dykes 30 years ago. But since then, they've become a common sight in this region of the Yellow River. Today, many of the dykes are wide and long. In some sections, they're as high as the river bank itself.

Like most farmers, Bao was completely unaware that these embankments are illegal, and often dangerous.

The director of the Yellow River Administration Commission Zhang Jinliang said flooding on the Yellow River is natural. But the current disaster in Shandong could have been avoided. The farmers use the dikes to control the water flow onto their land. But they actually make things worse. They speed up the flow of water, leading to a huge accumulation of silt and mud. The river has become shallow, a recipe for disaster.

Zhang Jinliang told the reporter, "The biggest threat from production dykes is that they narrow the channel of the Yellow River. This has raised the water level. When big floods come through, these dykes cannot contain the waters. And they collapse. The production dykes can also change the River's path. This can put huge pressure on the main banks. "

The government issued rules in the 1970s on water use from the Yellow River. Production dykes are illegal. But they have never disappeared. As the population has grown in the region, more and more people have settled by the river, planting farms. Now some 2 million farming families live here. If the production dikes are dismantled now, their livelihoods will be threatened. And any solution will be expensive.

Xu Kejun, head of Dongming County, Shandong Province, said, "I think the only way to solve the problem is relocation. But given the huge number of people involved, and shortage of farming land elsewhere, relocating them won't be easy."

How to deal with the production dikes has been a constant headache for local authorities. But the disaster in Shandong has highlighted the urgency of the crisis.

Officials with the Yellow River Administration Commission said that they are determined to dismantle all the illegal water conservancy projects, especially the production dykes, early next year. This will lower the level of the Yellow River, and make it safer for people nearby. Plans are also underway to shift farming to higher ground, raising the possibility that farmers living on the flood plain will be relocated.

(CCTV.com October 8, 2003)