Officials in charge of water and air pollution control of Olympic co-host city Qingdao expressed their assurance of environmental quality required by the sailing events that will kick off on Saturday.

He Xu, vice director with Qingdao Environmental Monitoring Center forecasted Wednesday that air quality of Qingdao would be guaranteed during the events as air condition of the city had been improving since 2003.

According to He, concerning departments of the Olympic co-host city collected air quality information of some previous Olympic host cities, in accordance with which they adopted air depollution measures.

"We set an criterion for the air quality of Qingdao Olympic sailing events according to that of the Sydney Olympics and Qingdao has already set up 23 automatic environmental monitoring subcenters in its urban area, three of which are working around the Olympic sailing venue," said He Xu.

"The center collects real-time data from the subcenters every an hour and finally makes a daily assessment of the city's air condition", she added.

Statistics showed 91.2 days out of one hundred in the urban area of Qingdao met the criterion as of the end of 2007, increased by 1.9 percent from 2003. As of August 6, this year has witnessed air quality around Qingdao Olympic sailing venue during the past days was qualified all the time.

"August is always the clearest month of Qingdao throughout the year, so air quality would be 'out of question' during the Olympics", He Xu believed.

As for the sea area where sailors would give chase, Wang Shulian, vice director of Qingdao Oceanic and Fishery Bureau, said she was "completely confident" in the sea water quality.

"We sample and examine the water once every day. The frequency is much higher than the international standard of once half a month", Wang said, adding that water quality of the Olympic regatta sea area has been mostly above the required standard of national grade II of China since the beginning of this June.

Qingdao dispatches more than 1,000 fishing boats to clean the floating substances within the regatta venue and neighboring sea area for more than ten hours every day. Qingdao oceanic and fishery bureau will also monitor and forecast the hydrological condition to guard against the red tide or other marine disasters.

"We are completely confident that the water quality will meet or even surpass the requirement during August," Wang said.

Qingdao is one of six co-host cities for the Beijing Olympics, it will host the sailing events that run from Aug. 9th to 23rd. Some 400 sailors from over sixty countries and regions will compete for 11 gold medals.

(Xinhua News Agency August 6, 2008)