The middle route of China's south-north water diversion project will come into service after 2014's flood season, said an official with the State Council.

Zhang Ye, deputy head of the South-to-North Water Diversion Office under the State Council, made the remarks at an opening ceremony for a construction project that will connect the route's Yellow River section with its Yangtze River section.

The ceremony was held in the city of Nanyang in central China's Henan Province.

Zhang said the first phase of the middle route construction project will be completed by the end of 2013, adding that all major projects along the main line of the route have already started construction.

The 474-kilometer-long connection between the Yellow River and the Yangtze River will pass through four cities and eighteen counties and cost 51.43 billion yuan (about 7.89 billion U.S. dollars), he said.

The total length of the route's main line is 1,432 kilometers and will run across the municipalities of Beijing and Tianjian and the provinces of Hebei and Henan. It is expected to handle 9.5 billion cubic meters of water annually, he added.

The massive south-north water diversion project is designed to take water from China's largest river, the Yangtze, to the country's arid northern regions. Water will flow northward via three routes - an eastern route, a middle route and a western route.

The project started with the construction of the eastern route in 2002. The construction of the middle route followed in 2003. Pre-construction evaluations of the western route will begin soon.

The middle and eastern routes ran up costs of 114.98 billion yuan by the end of March 2011, according to the project office.