THE swollen waters of Dongting Lake began receding yesterday after a flood crest down the Yangtze River passed without any major breaches in dykes protecting millions of homes, flood control officials said.

　Big teams of civilians and soldiers were still checking for leaks along the hundreds of miles of dykes containing the lake.

　Officials said yesterday the water level in China’s second biggest freshwater lake had peaked at 35 meters at around 5 a.m. and was dropping at around 0.99 cm an hour.

　The river’s flood crest was now rolling downstream toward Wuhan, a city of more than 7 million people, which declared a state of emergency Saturday night as the Yangtze rose 15 centimeters above its danger level.

　Flood control officials said the Yangtze flood crest was due to hit Wuhan in the early hours of this morning.

　Weathermen forecast heavy rain yesterday and today in the upper reaches of the Yangtze as well as in the lakes region in Hunan and Hubei provinces.

　But officials around Dongting said it was not expected to be as heavy as that which pounded southern China earlier this month. The only likely impact was that the waters would recede more slowly.

　Xinhua News Agency said an army of 1.1 million civilians and soldiers was fanned out along vulnerable stretches of the flood-prone Yangtze to check for leaks in dykes and to plug them.

　Officials in the region had been reasonably confident of a victorious end to their battle to stop Dongting spilling over into flat, fertile countryside where 10 million people live.

　Contingency plans had been drawn up to evacuate 100,000 people if the dykes burst.Although Dongting’s waters are receding,, the annual danger of Yangtze flooding is far from over.(SD-Agencies)