As the outcry against pollution of the upper reaches of the
Yellow River grows louder, Gansu
Province and the Inner
Mongolia Autonomous Region held working conferences last week
to improve regulations and action plans to control and clean up the
problem.
Gansu officials said that they will reform management systems
for sewage and improve standards for urban domestic pollution. The
province plans to implement controls for urban industrial, sewage
and rubbish pollution. It will specifically target the issue of
grease being dumped in the main sewage pipes in Lanzhou, the
provincial capital, said Zhao Weimin, director of the Gansu
Provincial Environment Protection Bureau.
Zhao said that the province will attempt to reach the central
government's water quality standards by the end of the 10th
Five-Year Plan. That period ends in 2005.
The Inner Mongolia government has created an emergency plan to
prevent water pollution accidents. It has established and confirmed
deadlines for completion of pollution-control infrastructure
projects as well as for polluting companies to clean up their
operations.
Industrial pollution is the chief culprit but sewage, chemical
fertilizers and pesticides are accomplices, according to a recent
report on Yellow River pollution.
A task force from the Yellow River Valley Water Resources
Protection Bureau conducted an inspection tour early this year
along the Yellow River. They found the water quality too poor for
drinking in some 40 percent of the river's main trunk.
"With the region's rapid economic development, annual discharge
of sewage into the Yellow River is double that of the 1980s,
reaching 4.4 billion cubic meters, and most of the tributaries in
the upper reaches of the Yellow River are polluted in varying
degrees," said Chao Zengping, of the Yellow River Water Conservancy
Committee.
Nearly all the tributaries in the middle and lower reaches have
poor water quality year round, Chao said. They have been turned
into cesspools.
The Yellow River, the second longest river in the country, has
been a vital resource for the northern regions for countless
centuries. From the highlands of Qinghai
Province, it runs some 3,000 kilometers through Gansu, the Ningxia
Hui Autonomous Region and Inner Mongolia.
That stretch of the river is lined with industrial enterprises
involved in such high-pollution industries as energy, heavy
chemicals, nonferrous metals and paper production. Most of the
enterprises simply dump their waste into the river without proper
treatment.
The Gansu Provincial Environment Protection Bureau reports that
237 million tons of wastewater pour into the Yellow River every
year from that province alone.
The Yellow River flows through four cities in Gansu but only the
capital, Lanzhou, has four sewage treatment plants at present, and
their daily handling ability is only 150,000 tons. The sewage
disposal fee charged is only enough to keep operating one
100,000-ton-capacity sewage treatment plant, according to Zhao
Weimin.
(China Daily September 27, 2004)