The Shanghai municipal government plans to renovate the 26-kilometer-long floodwall along Suzhou Creek and clean silt from the creek bed by 2008, government officials said yesterday.

The project, which makes up the third phase of a campaign to clean up the creek, is expected to cost 3.14 billion yuan (US$388 million).

"We plan to make the creek water and its surroundings meet landscaping criteria," said Zhu Shiqing, deputy director of the creek's cleanup project head office.

The government will set up monitoring stations along the creek to supervise water quality 24 hours a day.

It will also relocate a batch of polluting factories and sanitation ports along the creek while planting more trees and grass along the banks of the waterway.

"We want to completely recover the ecology of the creek," Zhu said, noting that the water quality in the creek's tributaries will also be improved.

The Suzhou Creek cleaning project began in 1998 and has greatly improved its water quality. The waterway was once known for its disgusting stench.

But pollution still exists in its tributaries.

During a recent spot check of the tributaries, members of the Shanghai Committee of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference found many problems, including toilet and textile factories that discharge sewage into waterways without treatment.

(Shanghai Daily February 9, 2006)