For a long time the upper reaches of the Hanjiang have been
threatened by industrial and consumer waste. A Xinhua News Agency
report on June 22 revealed that the thriving turmeric processing
industry in southern Shaanxi
Province has further exacerbated the river's pollution in
recent years.??
The Hanjiang is to supply water for the middle line
of the country's south-to-north water diversion project. Rising in
Shizhonggou in Ningqiang County of Shaanxi, it runs for 918
kilometers before joining its longest tributary, the Danjiang, at
Danjiangkou. It passes through the cities of Hanzhong, Shangluo and
Ankang in Shaanxi and Shiyan in Hubei
Province, with a catchment area of 100,000 sq km.
In Hanzhong the river is foamy and blackened,
giving off an unbearable stink. Saponin producers on both banks
discharge waste water into it day and night, seriously polluting
both surface and ground water.
According to Hu Shibin, professor from the
Northwest Sci-Tech University of Agriculture and Forestry, drawn
from turmeric, saponin is an important raw material for steroid
medicines used to treat cardiovascular diseases.
The country now has more than 200 saponin
producers, most located in Shaanxi and Hubei in the Hanjiang's
river valley. Nonetheless, due to a lack of technology, a majority
of the firms' wastewater has been discharged without any treatment,
making saponin production the country's second worst polluter after
papermaking.
Shaanxi has 80-odd saponin firms whose production
makes up half the nation's. Of them, 38 are based in Hanzhong,
discharging some 1 million tons of wastewater into the Hanjiang
annually. Less than a third of them have reached required standards
for water treatment, while another third are not equipped with
purification devices at all.
According to the overall program for the
south-to-north water diversion project approved by the State
Council in August 2002, its middle line will take water by 2010
from the Danjiangkou Reservoir in Hubei into major cities including
Beijing, Tianjin, Shijiazhuang and Zhengzhou in the drought-prone
north.
The increasingly worsening pollution in the
Hanjiang's upper reaches is posing a serious threat to the safety
of the project, but the local government faces a dilemma.
The trial planting of turmeric started in China in
the 1960s. Currently its acreage is over 1.2 million mu
(80,000 hectares) nationwide. Turmeric planting and processing has
become a pillar industry in many places, helping local farmers get
out of poverty and even become rich.
In Shaanxi alone, turmeric-growing areas account
for half the country's total. In order not to cut off local
farmers' incomes, Hu said the government cannot close down all
saponin firms along the Hanjiang that don't meet wastewater
treatment requirements.
According to Li Xiaolian, vice director of Shaanxi
Environmental Protection Bureau, since 2002 his bureau and local
governments have shut down 28 saponin firms. Meanwhile, they
provided financial aid of 1.32 million yuan (US$159,000) for Hu's
research on treatment of wastewater from the turmeric processing
industry.
Meanwhile, another task team composed of
researchers from China University of
Geosciences is engaged in a similar study. Both have made some
headway, but in terms of purification, there is nothing practically
applicable at the moment.
Hu's study helped a turmeric processing firm in
Xunyang County, Ankang City reduce its release of wastewater. This
cost the provincial government 600,000 yuan (US$72,000), but failed
to purify the firm's industrial wastewater, which continues flowing
into the Hanjiang everyday.
Li said a working conference, cosponsored by the
provincial commission of development and reform and the
environmental protection bureau, was held on May 23 in Lintong
County, Shaanxi. Experts and entrepreneurs discussed ways and means
to cope with the pollution in the Hanjiang.
Despite a previous total investment of 2 million
yuan (US$241,000) from the provincial government, more money is
needed to further wastewater treatment research, they said.
To date there is still no national wastewater
standard for the turmeric processing industry. In southern Shaanxi,
different standards are used in different places. What standards
are made decide the fate of turmeric processing firms, said
conference attendees.
(China.org.cn by Shao Da, July 4, 2005)