On the tenth day of the first month of the sixteenth year of Xuanping, this time is in the period when spring and the Lantern Festival are connected with each other, and many places are still immersed in the atmosphere of the festival.

The Spring Festival atmosphere in Jinling City has not yet ended, whether it is the government or the merchants, they are all beginning to build momentum for the Lantern Festival.

Several places in the city have begun to build Lantern Festival temple fairs, and a large number of lanterns of different shapes have been prepared and hung up one by one to render the atmosphere of the Lantern Festival in advance.

Merchants are taking the opportunity to launch various promotions with the intention of getting off to a good start.

But on the embankment of Hongze Lake, there is no atmosphere of Lantern Festival at all!

In order to rush the work and complete some key projects before the flood season, what holidays are there on the Hongze Lake embankment!

Many officials in charge of the project, whether for performance or really concerned about the people's livelihood, all stayed on the construction site for food and housing, and a large number of people recruited were also busy every day.

The Hongze Lake expansion project, the most critical project, is naturally the Hongze Lake embankment.

According to the Royal Institute of Technology's proposal, a 70-kilometre-long embankment would have to be built to meet the desired standard.

Depending on the topography, the height of the dam ranges from three to ten meters, and the width of the bottom of the dam is at least 50 meters, while the widest can reach more than 200 meters, and the width at the top varies from 10 to 30 meters.

In order to improve the flood resistance, this embankment must not be a civil embankment in the past, but must be a structure that combines stone strips and reinforced concrete.

Of course, if it is a dam made of pure stone, it is fine, but the construction period will be longer, and the cost will almost be too high for even the Tang Empire to bear.

Large-scale use of concrete, gravel, steel as the main raw materials, this is to speed up the construction period, but also to reduce costs.

Even if the cost of cement is high, it is not as high as the cost of giant jack stones!

There is no doubt that this project will be a huge project, with a huge amount of manpower and money to be used, and more importantly, a very long construction period.

According to the plan, it will take five years to complete the construction of the whole project!

At the same time, according to the degree of urgency, a certain section of the embankment was built successively, and the embankment, which began last autumn and is expected to be completed this summer, is divided into eight different locations, of which the longest section has been obtained four kilometers, and the total extent of eight sections of the embankment has reached 14.6 kilometers.

These eight sections of the area are all embankments that had been in danger last year, and their flood resistance is relatively poor, so they need to be built first, while the other embankments can barely continue to be used now, so the construction will be postponed to the next few years.

The entire Hongze Lake embankment, to some extent, is actually a project that directly breaks the Huai River, which is thought to intercept the river water, control the amount of water produced, and then protect the downstream areas.

At the time of the construction of the Hongze Lake embankment, the relocation of the surrounding area of Hongze Lake was also ongoing, because it had already been relocated during the flood last year, so the relocation work was relatively easy.

What needs to be relocated now is the newly planned area that will be used as a reservoir and incorporated into part of Hongze Lake, and the people in the area will be relocated in advance, so as not to wait until the summer flood season comes, and then move in a panic and cause big trouble.

The Tang Empire's government organization ability is still quite good, and the migration work during last year's flood was even larger, but there was no chaos, and now it is only a small-scale migration, so it is naturally impossible to have any new problems.

As for where the newly relocated people are relocated?

A considerable part of them moved to Huguang and Guangzhou, and only a few stayed in Jiangbei and northern Anhui.

These two places are already flooded for many years, and the population is large, and arable land resources are relatively tight, so it is too impossible to forcibly resettle hundreds of thousands of people.

So I simply migrated to Huguang.

Now the empire is vigorously developing the two provinces of Huguang and Guangzhou, which have a lot of land to be developed, and have been absorbing immigrants from the surrounding provinces for many years.

According to the empire's plan, in the next ten years, the development of the two provinces will bear fruit, and their grain production has already increased significantly, and they have begun to export grain to the surrounding regions.

According to the prediction of the Ministry of Agriculture, in ten years, the population and arable land level of the Huguang region will rise significantly, and finally its grain production will rise sharply, and it will become the new granary of the empire, and its importance will not belong to Jiangnan at all!

The Empire's migration of people to the provinces of the country, that is, internal migration, has never stopped, and the basic principle is to move people from areas with many people and few places to areas with few people and many people.

The main areas of migration are concentrated in Jiangbei, northern Anhui, Henan, Shandong, Hebei and Shanxi, and some areas of Jiangxi, Jiangnan and Zhejiang are also places of population migration.

The main places of population migration are Hunan, Hubei, Guangxi, Guangdong, western Liaoning, eastern Liaoning, northeast and northwest.

Among them, some people from Shandong, Hebei, and Shanxi moved to western Liaoning, eastern Liaoning, and northeast China, with the purpose of enriching the population in the border areas in addition to developing the northeast region.

Some people in Jiangxi, northern Anhui, Jiangbei and Henan mainly went to Huguang, and the purpose was naturally to develop Huguang.

There are also many small-scale migrations in other areas, mainly concentrated in some developable areas with good topography, or for military needs.

For example, the Pearl River Delta Plain in Guangdong and several small plains in Guangxi are all aimed at developing local agricultural resources and increasing grain production.

For immigrants from Yunnan, Sichuan, Tibet, Gansu, Northeast, Goryeo Peninsula and other regions, it was more out of local rule and military needs.

In addition, there is also the migration of the rural population to the city, which mainly occurs in the new industrial city represented by Shanghai, where the rural labor force goes to the city to work to make money, and the factories in the city need more labor.

However, it is worth noting that this transfer is temporary, not fixed, and a considerable part of the rural population will still return to the rural areas after they go to the cities.

This kind of uncertainty is very affected by the economy, if the economy is good, there will be more job opportunities, more people will be left, and if the economy is bad, there will be no job opportunities, and people will leave.

The government has given generous compensation packages to migrants, including land, houses, farming tools and cash subsidies, so most people are still willing to follow in the footsteps of the government to move to a new place and start a new life.

Of course, there are many people who are reluctant to leave their hometown, but no matter how deep their feelings for their hometown are, they can't withstand a bullet!

The relocation project in the Hongze Lake area is a policy project, whether the local people agree or not, it is impossible to stop the empire's intention to expand Hongze Lake.

The Tang Empire, in the final analysis, is still a highly centralized feudal dynasty, and there will not be too many scruples in doing things.

In fact, the same thing happened in the construction of the Hongze Lake embankment, the construction of the Hongze Lake embankment is a huge project, the number of workers needed this year alone is more than 50,000 people, and this is still a direct worker, there are at least 100,000 people in the rear to provide indirect services for this project.

For example, in addition to the installation of stone bars on the embankment, the rear also has to collect, polish, and transport stone bars, which all need to be done.

And in order to reduce the cost, it is impossible for the empire to say that all the money is hired mode, in that case, the money spent is too much, and the empire's finances cannot support it.

Therefore, the source of workers is mainly based on conscription!

The government recruited labor from the surrounding area and then went to work, and of course, in order to avoid a large-scale revolt of the people, this kind of conscription was conditional.

First of all, pack to eat!

Secondly, subsidies will be issued!

Again, take turns as well as for a limited time

Needless to say, the Tang Empire is a normal dynasty after all, and it is impossible to make the people serve the conscription and bring their own rations like some brutal dynasties.

In the case of subsidies, it is actually a salary, but the amount of this subsidy is relatively small.

Finally, this kind of compulsory conscription is in turn and time-limited, according to the model of three Ding to draw one, three months of forced labor can go home, of course, if you have money, you can also directly pay money to exempt from forced labor, this money is naturally more expensive, because the shortage of people, the government needs to hire other top.

Even if it is in the form of forced labor, only a small amount of subsidies and food and shelter, but the cost is still very huge, tens of thousands of people work on the embankment, and there are more than 100,000 people working indirectly in the rear.

Not to mention, the cost of materials is also very huge!

The cost of stone bars is very high, and the amount of stone bars required for a levee is a very large number.

Even if concrete is used to reduce costs, but because the output of cement is limited, more importantly, the quality of cement in this year is still relatively general, to face the perennial flood, in fact, it is powerless, so the concrete at this time is more used in some non-important parts, and on the side directly facing the lake, basically do not use a large area of concrete, but use stone strips.

If it weren't for such a high cost, the empire would not have spent more than three million yuan just on the first batch of funds.

In order to meet the construction deadline, the Hongze Lake embankment is in a hurry for the Spring Festival and the Lantern Festival, and flood control projects in other places are no exception.

Although the scale is not comparable to that of the Hongze Lake embankment, it is also very important, and the Yellow River and some dangerous sections of the Huai River basin have been urgently reinforced.

Cement is also used on a large scale in these projects!

A large number of domestic water conservancy projects have used cement, which also makes the empire's cement industry truly usher in the spring of large-scale development!

Not to mention in areas with heavy industrial bases such as Shanghai and Dangtu, even in Xuzhou and Huai'an, which were originally industrial wilderness areas, there are large cement factories rising from the ground!