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| China's dammed Yangtze River a cesspool of sewage | ||||
| 2004-04-29 | ||||
Six months after Goddess Lake began filling up, it's become a cesspool filled with pig blood, dead fish, raw sewage, dye and runoff from tanneries. "Can you see the sewage pipe dumping into the lake over there?" taxi driver Lu Yongheng asked. He pointed to effluent cascading into the lake, which is a few hundred yards from the Yangtze River. Similar stories of environmental degradation are unfolding along the Yangtze upriver from the Three Gorges Dam. As the huge dam and smaller dams along the river's tributaries block the water, the flushing and self-cleaning action of the Yangtze River basin has slowed. Reservoirs are becoming sewers, filled with trash and smelly water. Local officials refuse to shut down polluting factories, fearful that unemployment will rise. Edicts from Beijing on controlling industrial waste go unheeded.
The environmental deterioration that accompanies the $22 billion project shows how local authorities can thwart the toothless dictates of Beijing, and how zeal to sustain China's economic growth often trumps concerns about pollution. The central government has ordered hundreds of factories along the river closed because they were heavy polluters. But local officials have balked.
Earlier this month, the State Environmental Protection Administration declared that pollution treatment projects along the Yangtze were "not as smooth as planned," the China Daily newspaper said. Local officials declined to close 206 of 304 small and medium-sized factories, including paper mills and distilleries, which the central government targeted as major polluters, a report by the agency said. In addition, 242 large factories, including steel and chemical plants, were told to improve their pollution control facilities. Of these, 227 haven't completed the work, it said. To address worsening water pollution, China's government said last year that it was spending about $4.8 billion through 2009 to build 150 new wastewater treatment plants and 170 garbage disposal sites along the upper reaches of the Yangtze. Only 17 of these treatment plants have been built so far. "The central government has spent quite a lot of money for these water treatment plants, but didn't give money for their operation," said Zheng Zegen, an environmental engineering professor at Chongqing's Architecture University. So municipal governments and larger factories must pay to operate the new plants. Despite worsening problems with pollution, there's only one private environmental group in the upper Yangtze River region, the Green Volunteer League of Chongqing. Its president, Wu Dengming, sympathizes with local officials who're torn between demands by Beijing to stop dumping waste and pressures to maintain economic growth. "Once the factories that pollute are closed, it causes big social problems. People will lose their jobs," said Wu. He held up pictures showing waste near factories along the river. "These photos show that the Yangtze River has turned into a garbage dump," he said, then added: "The common people, including officials, have no awareness of environmental protection. If economic activity causes environmental damage, they don't care. They just want to make money." About a quarter of the 207 tributaries that flow into the Yangtze River are so seriously polluted that the water is unfit for irrigation, local press reports say. The Yangtze's water quality has also deteriorated. State officials say it's at grade three under a Chinese rating system, which means it's of poor quality but usable for various purposes. However, the state system doesn't include a count of coliform bacteria, a sign of raw sewage, which would drop the grade further. Some 30,000 ships and vessels operating in the Three Gorges Reservoir dump an estimated 7 million tons of excrement into the Yangtze every year. Moreover, cities keep dumping raw sewage into the river basin. As the water levels in the Yangtze River reservoir rise, they're causing landslides that expose landfills and garbage dumps, and more garbage is spilling into the river. Wu said he's seen floating belts of flotsam on the river that stretch for several miles.
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| Posted by:Steve White |
| #5 It'll be cleaned up when the dam breaks. |
| Posted by: Laurence of the Rats 2004-04-29 6:43:36 PM |
| #4 This is just one of the problems of the Thre Gorges Dam. Many Archeological site along the Yangtze have been submerged or destroyed. Sacred sites to the Chinese people have also been destroyed by the dam. The only way to stop this disaster is too take down the dam, which won't happen anytime soon. That is, unless someone blows it up, but China would have a 1/3 population reduction if that happened. |
| Posted by: Charles 2004-04-29 9:17:57 AM |
| #3 My new apartment in China is right next to a small river. When I walk across the bridge, it smells. Another river near my office smells like a port-a-potty in Texas in August. |
| Posted by: Gromky 2004-04-29 5:32:19 AM |
| #2 someone - Lol! Bravo! It's a dammed shame and dammed dangerous, too, gosh darnit! "The central government has spent quite a lot of money for these water treatment plants, but didn't give money for their operation." Lol! Commies to the core. Sigh. They may never get it. Jobs... or Environment... "Oh, Xinhuawuwangtze! This industrialization stuff is soooo complicated! Can we |
| Posted by: .com 2004-04-29 2:34:05 AM |
| #1 Damn Yangtztes! |
| Posted by: someone 2004-04-29 2:12:31 AM |