The Xiping coal-fired plant in Fengjie, Chongqing municipality, is to be demolished at 1:10 p.m. local time on Jan. 20, and a government office building brought down an hour later.

A 60-member crew from the Beijing-based China Central Television Network is already in Fengjie laden with broadcast equipment to prepare for the formal launch of the campaign to clean up the bottom of the future reservoir. The planned explosions will make for "a wonderful scene," the newspaper said.

The reservoir, due to be partially filled next year, will form a lake stretching 600 km upstream when the Three Gorges dam is completed in 2009. Beijing is spending US$25 million a year over the next five years to scrub clean the land to be submerged, which includes hundreds of toxic sites.

The first buildings to be levelled as part of the cleanup are located in the densely populated downtown core of Fengjie (population 30,000). With flat land at a premium in towns built between the mountains and the Yangtze River, it is not unusual for a facility such as a power plant to have been built in the middle of a population centre.

Thirty demolition experts from the People’s Liberation Army engineering corps have been in Fengjie for several months to prepare for the event, and make sure nothing goes wrong.

On Oct. 30 last year, the demolition of a power plant in Xuanwei, Yunnan province – also broadcast live on TV – went horribly wrong when a 120-metre-high chimney toppled onto the crowd, killing one person and injuring 30 others.

After Sunday’s demolitions, offices belonging to the education department and the water company will be the next buildings to be blown up in Fengjie, the Chongqing Economic News reported.