The Taihu Lake basin covers a total area of 36,900 square kilometers. Its pollution affects economically developed Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. Its population accounts for 8.3 percent of China?s total and yet produces one fifth of the GDP.

Environmentalists say that the lake basin was formerly China?s major grain producer and its water used to be drinkable. However, in the last two decades, as there has not been sufficient attention to environmental protection, water quality in 80 percent of the water surfaces have degenerated and the quality of the entire water body has dropped by one class and a half. Water pollution spreads from central towns to the entire basin.

According to Fang Lingdi, director of the bureau of water resource protection of the Taihu Lake area, the 2,338 square kilometers of the water surface of the lake has an annual water supply of 16.2 billion cubic meters of water as the major production and drinking water source for Shanghai, southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang.

She said that the water body of the lake, high in the rim and low in the middle, is slow in currents and the water is replaced once in 310 days. Water from the Yangtze River is diverted to the lake through Wangyu River to quicken the water replacement.

According to checks by environmentalists in Shanghai, Suzhou, Wuxi and Changzhou, the result is marked. Water quality in most of the lake basin has reached the state-prescribed second and third class and the content of phosphorus, nitrogen and permanganate have slipped respectively by 56 percent, 25 percent and 9 percent, as compared with four years ago. The quality of the water supplied to Shanghai, Suzhou, Wuxi and Changzhou has improved markedly, benefiting nearly 10 million people.

The quality of the water in the Huangpu River in Shanghai has reached the state-prescribed second class standard for the first time in a decade.

(www.cenews.com.cn October 16, 2002)