A reef explosion operation at the Three Gorges dam was checked and approved on Saturday by experts from the Ministry of Communications and the China Yangtze River Three Gorges Project Development Corp. Thirty reefs in the waterway between Fulin County, in the southwest’s Chongqing Municipality, and the Tongluo Gorges, were destroyed on July 25, corporation sources said. The operation is part of efforts to raise the water level of the Three Gorges reservoir to 156 meters above sea level. At that level, the reefs would have sunk under the water and become a danger to shipping. The reef explosion project, which began in October 2005, involved more than 850,000 cubic meters of earth and stone work. In a related development, a passageway over the Three Gorges program is being dismantled as its "mission" has been completed. The passageway was built at the same time as the northern and southern sections of the main wall of the Three Gorges dam. It served as a platform for crane operation when the main wall and the power stations were being built. The dismantling operation will be completed at the end of next year, corporation sources said. Launched in 1994, the Three Gorges program will help navigation and flood control on the Yangtze as well as generate electricity.