Huaihe River is seriously polluted due to excessive discharges
of industrial and daily waste, according to a report from the
Huaihe River Committee.
An excessive influx of industrial waste from the provinces along
the river is the major source of contamination, said Wang Bin,
deputy director of the committee under the Ministry of Water
Resources, quoting a report examining the chemical oxygen demand
(COD) and other chemical contents in the river in 2006.
The amount of COD, ammonia and nitrogen, the main indexes to
determine the water quality, in the river has far exceeded the
national standard, the report said.
Henan Province, the largest source of
pollution, discharged a total of 327,400 tons of industrial waste
into the river in 2006.
Only 43.2 percent of the 46 sections of the river's 44 major
tributaries passed the quality test.
An average 4.4 billion tons of waste is discharged into the
Huaihe every year, with the average COD density reaching 194 mg per
liter.
The report admitted that the quality control project which was
launched in 1993 had failed as 851,800 tons of COD flowed into the
river in 2006, 35 percent more than the level stipulates.
Curbing industrial waste discharge is the prime task to realize
the target amount of 466,000 tons of COD with a concentration of
110 mg by 2010, the report said.
The report has been presented to the environmental inspection
team under the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature.
The Huaihe River originates at Mount Taibai, central China's
Henan Province, and runs eastward between the Yellow River and the
Yangtze River, cutting through Henan and east China's Anhui and Jiangsu provinces before entering the Yangtze
River via the Hongze Lake.
(Xinhua News Agency July 28, 2007)
