The Chinese government has decided to invest largely in
developing technologies to treat water pollution, according to the
State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) Monday.
The State Council, or the cabinet, has approved three big
state-funded programs for the research and development of such
technologies, said Zhao Yingmin, a SEPA official.
The investment will be hundreds of million yuan, he said.
The programs, to last between 2008 and 2020, will support
researches of technologies to remedy pollution of rivers, lakes,
drinking water and those to monitor the water body environment.
The SEPA said earlier that 26 percent of surface water in China
is totally unusable, 62 percent is unsuitable for fish and 90
percent of the rivers running through cities are polluted.
The latest survey showed that 32.3 percent of Chinese were
unsatisfied with the local water environment while 20 percent were
not content with the sanitation of drinking water in public
places.
The survey, titled "2007 environmental protection and people's
livelihood index," covered 9,011 respondents from 29 provinces and
autonomous regions.
A project under the program will be carried out at Taihu Lake in
the eastern Jiangsu Province. It had suffered a serious blue-green
algae outbreak in summer 2007, threatening the tap water supply of
more than 1 million residents in the lakeside city of Wuxi.
"The local environment authority will actively cooperate with
scientists to help improve the water quality of the lake," said Shi
Zhenhua, head of the provincial environmental department.
(Xinhua News Agency January 15, 2008)
