 By 2014, more than $79 billion had been spent, making it one of the most ambitious and expensive engineering projects in human history.The Eastern Route Project (ERP) consists of an upgrade to the Grand Canal, and will be used to divert a fraction of the total flow of the Yangtze River to Northern China.According to Chinese hydrologists, the entire flow of the Yangtze at the point of its discharge into the East China Sea is, on average, 956 km3 per year; the annual flow does not fall below around 600 km3 per year even in driest years.