The Huaihe River basin remains heavily polluted despite more
than a decade's efforts to clean it, water officials said
Monday.
In a report to the National People's Congress, the Huaihe River
commission under the Ministry of Water Resources, said the country
had failed to control the amount of pollutants dumped into the
river, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
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The polluted Huaihe
River
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And the situation remains serious because the amount of
wastewater being discharged into the river by provinces within the
basin exceeds national standards, the report said.
Despite the negative report, Wang Bin, deputy director of the
commission, said pollution-control efforts had "reaped some
fruit".
For instance, the chemical oxygen demand (COD), an important
indicator of water pollutants, was 851,800 tons last year, its
lowest level since the government launched its campaign to clean up
the Huaihe in 1993.
However, the figure was still about 30 percent above the target
level.
Wang said the discharge of wastewater into the river was the
main reason for the continued pollution.
The Huaihe River stretches more than 1,000 km through Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu and Shandong provinces.
Henan, the country's most populous province, with more than 100
million people, was the worst offender, the report said,
discharging more than 320,000 tons of COD, nearly twice the
permitted amount, into the river last year. Shandong discharged a
little more than 120,000 tons.
And the situation is showing no signs of improving, Wang said.
In the first half of the year, more than half the 600 pipes pumping
pollutants into the river were found to be discharging amounts
above the permitted levels.
Wang said about 4.4 billion tons of wastewater were being dumped
into the river every year.
It will be very difficult to achieve the goal of reducing the
COD discharge to about 460,000 tons by 2010, he said.
"The most important task now is to ensure industrial polluters
achieve the required standards," Wang was quoted by Xinhua as
saying.
(China Daily August 7, 2007)
