Chinese river too polluted to touch

MUCH of the water in two of China's main rivers is too polluted to touch, let alone drink, despite more than a decade of clean-ups.

The pollution of the Huai and Liao Rivers is a risk to a sixth of the population, state media reported yesterday.

Half the checkpoints along the Huai River and its tributaries in central and eastern China showed pollution of "Grade 5" or worse -- the top of the dial in key toxins, meaning it was unfit for human contact and may not be fit for irrigation.

Fourteen years of bids to clean them up had reduced some of the worst pollution, but factory waste was still far too high, chairman of the National People's Congress Environment and Resources Protection Committee Mao Rubai said in a report.

The rivers posed a "threat to the water safety of one-sixth of the country's 1.3 billion population", the China Daily said.

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China's Double-Edged Sword: Improvement of Water Supplies without Accounting for Greening Costs

This summer China has both promulgated new restrictions and policies protecting its water bodies and rejected using green Gross Domestic Product (GDP) calculations, a way to better quantify the economic impacts of national environmental degradation. After three major lakes were affected by algae blooms in the last 2 months - Chao Lake, Tai Lake and Dian Lake – affecting the citizens near or reliant on the lakes for drinking water, the State Environmental Protection Administration chief Zhou Shengxian stated this month that strict measures must be introduced assuage public concerns about water safety. Ironically enough, the Chinese government has postponed work on calculating its green GDP, which could aid the country identify its worst environmental problems. A 2004 report found that environmental degradation in 2004 cost 511.8 billion yuan (US$67.7 billion) or 3.05 percent of GDP.

– View the Planet Ark article
– View the Asia News article
– View the South China Post article

China's Double-Edged Sword: Improvement of Water Supplies without Accounting for Greening Costs

This summer China has both promulgated new restrictions and policies protecting its water bodies and rejected using green Gross Domestic Product (GDP) calculations, a way to better quantify the economic impacts of national environmental degradation. After three major lakes were affected by algae blooms in the last 2 months - Chao Lake, Tai Lake and Dian Lake – affecting the citizens near or reliant on the lakes for drinking water, the State Environmental Protection Administration chief Zhou Shengxian stated this month that strict measures must be introduced assuage public concerns about water safety. Ironically enough, the Chinese government has postponed work on calculating its green GDP, which could aid the country identify its worst environmental problems. A 2004 report found that environmental degradation in 2004 cost 511.8 billion yuan (US$67.7 billion) or 3.05 percent of GDP.

– View the Planet Ark article
– View the Asia News article
– View the South China Post article