In spite of ten years of treatment costing billions of yuan, the
pollution in Taihu Lake continues to worsen. The 33.5 million
people living around Taihu will probably have to wait another
decade to drink clean water from the country's third-largest
freshwater lake.
Covering an area of 2,400 square kilometers in east China, Taihu
Lake is a major source of drinking water for people living in
Shanghai and east China's Jiangsu
and Zhejiang
provinces.
The Taihu Lake basin accounts for about 3 percent of the
country's land area and 8 percent of its population. Historically a
rich and fertile area, it has become one of the most populous and
prosperous regions in the country.
But tremendous economic growth and the huge population of the
area are putting the lake under increasing environmental pressure,
resulting in deteriorating water quality in recent years.
During the past ten years, a number of projects have been
completed to curb the flooding of Taihu Lake, Vice Minister of
Water Resources Zhai Haohui said recently at a high-profile seminar
in Shanghai. These projects established a framework for flood
control and the utilization of water resources.
The Ministry of Water Resources (MWR) reports
that the first phase of Taihu Lake projects have produced 15.8
billion yuan (US$1.9 billion) in economic benefits, two-and-a-half
times the original investment.
"For example, these projects played an important role in
combating the massive flooding of Taihu Lake basin in 1999, saving
9.2 billion yuan (US$1.1 billion)," said Sun Jichang, director of
the MWR's Taihu Lake Basin Administration Bureau.
During the Taihu seminar held on December 3, Zhai pledged that
people living in the area will be able to drink clean water from
the lake by 2015.
However, experts say that the quality of the lake continues to
deteriorate despite more than a decade of effort from both the
central government and local authorities. Flood control standards
are still low and the pollution of the lake remains serious.
The lake's environmental problems include accelerated
eutrophication, or aging, caused by nitrogen and phosphorus
enrichment. These materials cause an overgrowth of algae and
further deterioration, including oxygen depletion. The lake is
probably also contaminated with potentially toxic substances
originating from increased agricultural, domestic and industrial
activities.
The State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) has been closely
monitoring Taihu's water quality, using 110 manned and three
automatic surveillance stations scattered throughout the entire
lake area.
One of the basic causes of the pollution lies in sewage
treatment measures lagging far behind the rapid social and economic
development of the Yangtze River delta.
In the early 1990s, experts estimated that the annual industrial
sewage entering the lake would reach 540 million tons and household
sewage would reach 320 million tons. Spot checks conducted in 2000
indicated that total sewage surpassed 5.3 billion tons.
According to Sun Jichang, only 30 percent of the household
sewage is treated before being dumped into the lake. Gao Erkun of
the MWR added that standards and treatment capacity for sewage and
wastewater have not been able to meet actual requirements.
SEPA officials said by 2005, plants in the Taihu Lake region
will have the capacity to treat 2.2 million tons of sewage per day,
nearly 30 percent more than the 1.7 million tons per day required
by the 10th Five-Year Plan (2001–05). A total of 243 projects will
be constructed to treat wastewater and rubbish, remove silt and
reduce contamination from farming and ships. These projects will
cost 21.9 billion yuan (US$2.6 billion).
But even if all the wastewater produced in this region is
treated in accordance with current standards, it still exceeds the
capacity of the basin, Sun said.
The people and enterprises?who have benefited from the
region's industrialization in the past two decades now have to pay
for the treatment of wastewater and rubbish.
Under the auspices of the State Council, some cities in the
region have been seeking water resources through cross-regional
transmission.
Cities like Suzhou, Changzhou and Wuxi that are neighbors of the
Yangtze River have utilized river water to drive their rapid
economic development for many years.
During the past three years, the Taihu Lake area borrowed more
than 6 billion cubic meters of water from the Yangtze, half of
which flowed into the lake itself.
But experts warn that a reasonable and cautious attitude must be
adopted with regard to cross-regional water transmission.
"No doubt, the quality of the Yangtze and Qiantang rivers is
better than that of Taihu Lake," said Chen Jiyu, an academician
with the Chinese Academy of Engineering. "However, it should be
noted that these rivers themselves are suffering from increasingly
serious pollution."
The fundamental way to improve the quality of the lakes and
rivers is to solve the pollution issue as well as adopting measures
to save water, Chen stated.?
(China Daily December 17, 2004)