Water from the Pihe River slowly flowed on Saturday into an aqueduct, a major part of the Yangtze-to-Huai River Water Diversion project. This step signals that the steel aqueduct has successfully completed tests, and the section of the river is officially open to navigation. Photo shows the aqueduct on the Pihe River in Feixi county of East China's Anhui Province. (Compiled by He Jinying)

The total length of the aqueduct is 350 meters, of which 246 meters is built from steel. Weighing about 21,000 tons, the aqueduct is designed for a flow of 150 cubic meters per second.

The steel aqueduct sits above a canal with a span of 110 meters, which architects said is the longest span of similar structures in the world, 3.8 meters longer than world-famous Magdeburg Water Bridge in Germany.

At 723 kilometers in length, this water diversion project will take water from the Yangtze River to the Huaihe River to supply 13 cities in East China's Anhui Province and 2 cities in Central China’s Henan Province, covering 70,000 square kilometers.

The cost for this project was 94.915 billion yuan ($14.69 billion), of which 87.537 billion yuan was used in the Anhui section.