The three rivers of Minjiang, Qingyijiang and Dadu seriously eroded the rocks of Linyun mountain, where the Leshan Mountain Giant Buddha statue stands, and it is necessary to rebuild the embankment to lighten the erosion, said Guo Mingxing of the local management of cultural heritage protection.

The embankment is at the north gate of the scenic park, which is crowded with thousands of tourists during travel season.

The project will add two 100-meter drainage channels and enlarge the current square at the north gate to 10,000 square meters, ten times the size of the current one, to accommodate@tourists and thus improve safety, said Guo.

The project, which will last for four months, costs 7.8 million yuan (940,000 US dollars) and has received loans from the World Bank.

It is also part of the second phase of a maintenance project for the statue, which includes construction of a cliff-top plank road, a facelift of ancient architecture and stabilizing dangerous rocks. Approximately two years are needed to complete the whole project, said Zeng Zhiliang, engineer with the ancient architecture construction.

The Buddha statue, which took 90 years to build some 1,200 years ago, was said to stabilize the river waters and prevent flooding by monitoring the three nearby rivers.

The Buddha statue, a sitting Maitreya, measures 71 meters tall and 28 meters wide, 18 meters higher than the destroyed Buddha statue at Bamyan Valley, Afghanistan, once thought to be the tallest in the world.

The statue was put on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's World Cultural Heritage list in 1996.