The Taihu Lake pollution crisis which affected the drinking
water supply of about two million residents in east China has
prompted local authorities to pledge more investment in sewage
treatment and threaten polluting factories with closure.
"The city will monitor 22 key polluting companies and another
502 factories will need to be licensed to discharge waste," said
Liu Hongzhi, vice mayor of Wuxi city in Jiangsu Province.
A bloom of algae in Taihu Lake caused the tap water supply to
the city to be cut for days. The algae bloom was the result of
persistent water pollution from industrial and household
sewage.
"New projects in the chemical, printing and dyeing, and melting
sectors of downtown Wuxi will no longer be approved," Liu said.
"The household sewage treatment rate will reach 75 percent by
2010 in both towns and counties in Wuxi," he added.
He also pledged that treatment of water pollution in Taihu Lake
would account for three percent of the city's gross domestic
product in 2010.
In Changzhou city, which has two rivers leading into Taihu Lake,
82 printing and dyeing, pharmaceutical, and chemical plants have
been ordered to halt the discharge of waste and limits on the
amounts of waste were imposed on 18 other factories.
The plants who can not meet the waste discharge standards will
be asked to cut their capacity by half, according to an emergency
meeting of the Wujin District of Changzhou.
The quality of water from all tap water companies in Wuxi has
met the standards for drinking water, after experts finally
succeeded in dispelling the stench produced by the blue-green algae
at Taihu Lake with potassium permanganate.
The tap water supply for Wuxi city was halted on May 22, when
its major source, Taihu Lake, started to stink from a blue-green
algae bloom.
Some 259 million cubic meters of water were diverted from the
Yangtze River to dilute the lake.
Workers have collected 6,000 tons of blue-algae from the lake,
according to an environmental protection official of Wuxi.
(Xinhua News Agency June 5, 2007)