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DAM-L Chongqing launches campaign to prevent a Three Gorges cesspool (fwd)
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Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 15:20:00 -0400
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Subject: Chongqing launches campaign to prevent a Three Gorges cesspool
[Image]]THREE GORGES PROBE, June 27, 2001
Chongqing launches campaign to prevent a Three
Gorges cesspool
With only two years left before the water level is scheduled
to rise behind the massive Three Gorges dam, Chongqing
municipality has pledged to spend more than one billion
dollars cleaning up the heavily polluted Yangtze River to
prevent the dam's 600-kilometre reservoir from becoming
a cesspool.
In May, Chongqing Municipality -- the super-municipality
which is responsible for 75 percent of the Three Gorges
reservoir area and 30 million of its residents -- announced a
special budget of US$500 million to treat and remove the
hundreds of open garbage dumps piled along the Yangtze's
riverbanks.
For thousands of years Chongqing residents have been
dumping their garbage along the Yangtze's riverbanks,
which the Yangtze would wash downstream during flood
season.
But now that the Three Gorges reservoir is about to back
up and permanently slow down the Yangtze's flow,
concentrating pollutants and garbage in the new reservoir,
Chongqing has finally been forced to confront its waste.
The People's Daily reported in June that officials at
Chongqing's Environmental Protection Bureau consider
building new drainage works and treatment plants a
"pressing matter" since most of the city's wastewater and
sewage discharges directly into the Yangtze and Jialin rivers
untreated, contributing to 60 percent of pollution in the
Three Gorges area.
Citing a survey by the bureau, Chongqing's leading
newspaper, Chongqing Chengbao, revealed in May that
eight of the city's main sewer pipes are discharging
untreated sewage and industrial wastewater directly into the
Yangtze and Jialin rivers, the city's main source of drinking
water.
The paper also reported that city officials expect water
quality to improve by 2004 when three new treatment
plants, partly financed by the World Bank, are to be
completed. An additional three treatment plants are
expected to be completed by 2010 for a total cost of
US$700 million, with financing from domestic banks,
national bonds, and user fees collected from local industries.
Chongqing's widely-publicized efforts to clean up the
Yangtze River follow reports that many local residents fear
the Three Gorges reservoir will make pollution worse.
Residents of Fengjie County -- 400 kilometres downstream
of urban Chongqing -- already refuse to drink water from
the Yangtze for fear of upstream contamination. Instead,
local residents have pooled funds to build their own
reservoir, Chongqing Chengbao reports.
Meanwhile, Chinese environmental experts insist that
pollution belts visible near every city along the Three
Gorges reservoir will worsen and spread into stagnant bays
off the main reservoir because the Yangtze will no longer be
able to dilute and flush pollutants downstream, and because
garbage will continue to accumulate along the riverbanks
after 2003.
"Everybody knows the Yangtze will become undrinkable
on completion of the big dam," writes Professor Lei, an
environmental protection expert and retired Chongqing
university professor who has recently visited the Three
Gorges area. According to Professor Lei, every single
county along the reservoir has plans to build their own
reservoirs for drinking water because they don't expect the
Yangtze will be fit for consumption after 2003.
Professor Lei believes the scale of the environmental
clean-up needed along the Yangtze is far greater than
Chongqing has bargained for and that clean-up, once the
reservoir is completed, will be virtually impossible "even if a
mountain of gold is spent on it."
Professor Lei argues that the government could have taken
steps to avoid a pollution crisis much earlier but instead
officials at all levels -- including the State Council's Three
Gorges Project Construction Committee -- were too busy
trying to cover up the truth about Three Gorges' growing
environmental threat, fearing that exposing the problem
would strengthen opposition to the dam.
Last year, Qinghua University professor Zhang Guangduo,
another prominent environmental expert, advised Three
Gorges officials that US$37 billion should have been set aside
for cleaning up the Yangtze while the project is under
construction.
An estimated 40 million people depend on the Yangtze for
their drinking water.
China's limited experience with wastewater treatment does
not bode well for the Yangtze, Professor Lei argues.
The state's three-year campaign to clean up central China's
Huai River -- the source of drinking water for 150 million --
has failed to produce results even though local authorities
forced some polluting enterprises to shut down.
In Yunnan province, the government has already spent
US$500 million trying to improve water quality in polluted
Lake Dian and it may take at least another billion dollars
before the lake is clean, Professor Lei reports.
- END -
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