Residents of Fengjie, a hinterland county of the Three Gorges area in Central China's Chongqing Municipality applauded the arrival of piped natural gas Sunday after using coal and liquid gas as fuel for years.

Running across three branches of the Yangtze River, the Tangxi River, Zhuyi River and the Meixi River and across mountains over 1, 000 meters high, the pipeline runs 86.5 kilometers.

According to Liu Benrong, a county leader, about half of the 30, 000 families in Fengjie are using coal as fuel while the rest use liquid gas.

As the first batch of users, 600 of the 30,000 families in Fengjie began to use natural gas on Sunday. It is estimated that by the beginning of next year natural gas will reach 2,000 families in Fengjie and in three years 80 percent of the citizens will use natural gas.

The natural gas is to reach all districts and counties by the year of 2010.