UNITED NATIONS - / MaximsNews Network / - 23 November 2007 -- Tieling , China -“When I was young, if we got visitors, we would go to the river to catch fish with a net. We could catch many big fishes of different kinds. At that time, there were big willows on the river bank so the villagers could relax under the trees in summer,” recalled Xie, who’s in his 70s and lives in this Northeastern Chinese village.  

Xie was talking about the Tiaozi River, a tributary of the Liao River which feeds 30 million Chinese people. No fish in the water; no plants on the bank. With the stinking smell of rotten fish, with the disgusting color of excrements, it is today an open-air escape canal rather than a river.  

“In the recent 10 years, the river water was polluted by the upstream area. Not only were the fishes in the water killed off, but also the trees along the river bank were destroyed by the wastewater which contains chemical pollutants” he added, “now the villagers no longer come to the riverside. If it is windy, we can even smell the stinks in our houses.”  

The Liao River system drains the southern part of the Liao and Sungari plains of central Northeast China, in Liaoning Province and Inner Mongolia. The river is about 1,350 km long. 

It is one of the seven main river systems in China. However, the once “mother river” of Northeastern China has been heavily polluted by industrial sources. Although the Chinese government has made cleanup efforts since 1996, the situation there remains serious.  

Mao Rubai, chairman of the Committee for the Protection of Environment and Resources under the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), gave his warning over the situation of water pollution in the country, at the 29th meeting of the NPC Standing Committee in August this year. He said the Liao River is still heavily polluted.

The chemical oxygen demand (COD) discharge, an important indicator of water pollutants, reduced from 1995 to 2000 in the Liao River Basin, but has increased since with the 2006 figure 76 percent above the target level.  

Zhang Jingqiang, a representative of NPC and mayor of Tieling said in an interview, that the Liao River basin is an important area for the heavy industry, energy and grain producing. 

However, the Liao River is heavily contaminated, which affects the people’s production and life; therefore it is an important task to deal with the pollution so that people and animals along the river have clean water to drink.  

“People and animals here have been drinking this kind of water in the recent 10 years;” said a granny who lives in an affected village, pointing to her water vat which was filled with black water. She said the water was from the well, which was polluted and all the wells within an area of several miles had been polluted. 

“Look at the bulge on my neck,” she said, refusing to give her name, pointing at the bulge, which was like an egg on her neck, “this is because of the water.”  

The Liao River basin is rich in mineral resources such as coal, oil, iron, copper, lead and magnesium, so many industrial cities have emerged in this area in the recent decades. Zhu Zhenjia, engineer in chief of Songliao River Water Resources Commission under Ministry of Water Sources said that the general characteristics of the industrial structure of the Liao River basin was heavy with chemical industries as the main body.  

The discharge of uncleaned sewerage into the river was the main reason for the continued heavy pollution. According to Mao’s report, the Zhaosutai River, a tributary of the Liao River, is mainly contaminated by its tributary, the Tiaozi River, into which the sewerage of Siping City is dumped. Siping City is in Jilin Province in Northeastern China. 

At present, the city generates about 80,000 tons of wastewater every day, among which only 40,000 to 50,000 tons can be disposed and the rest is discharged straight into the Tiaozi River.  

Another tributary of the Liao River, the Hun River, drains the city of Shenyang, the biggest heavy industrial city in Northeastern China. According to Mao’s report, in Shenshuiwan Sewage Disposal Factory in Shenyang City, the government officials who made investigative tour found that 75 percent of the 1,170,000 tons of wastewater every day can be disposed in Shenyang while there is still 400,000 tons of wastewater discharged into the Hun River without any disposal clean-up. Yet, Shenyang city is regarded as the best in sewage disposal in the entire Northeastern China.  

The Taizi River which is another tributary of the Liao River, drains many industrial cities such as Benxi, Liaoyang and Anshan. The investigative officials found that local factories still dump the wastewater, which contained many chemical pollutants into the Taizi River.  

At present, there is not an adequate system of the technological standards for the water- pollution prevention in China, according to Mao’s report. The current required standard for sewage discharge is too low, so that even the polluters achieve the standards, there will still be pollution. Therefore, only to ensure the industrial polluters achieve the required standard is far too low to be enough according to environmental analysts here.  

The Chinese government seems to have realized the problem and is now making an effort to solve it. Under the 11th Five-year Plan (2006-2010), the central government of China will allocate 150 billion (about 20 billion US dollars) for the country’s sewage disposal. 

On Sep. 10th this year, the State Environmental Protection Administration of China released a letter to local governments to ask for advice for the amendment of the standards of local sewage systems.  

Labels: United Nations, U.N.,  Water and Sanitation

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