Polluted China Rivers Unfit To Touch, Threaten 1/6 of Population

Reuters, Aug 27, 2007-

BEIJING (Reuters) – Polluters along two of China’s main rivers have defied a decade-old clean-up effort, leaving much of the water unfit to touch, let alone drink, and a risk to a sixth of the population, state media said on Monday.

Half the check points 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 that the water was unfit for human contact and may not be fit even for irrigation, national legislators were told.

Years of crackdowns and waste treatment investment have reined in some of the worst damage to the Huai and Liao Rivers, but industrial pollution remained far too high, Mao Rubai, chairman of the National People’s Congress environment and resources protection committee, said in a report delivered on Sunday.

The rivers posed a “threat to the water safety of one sixth of the country’s 1.3 billion population,” the China Daily said.

The pollution on the Huai threatened the massive South-North Water Transfer Project to draw water from the Yangtze River through the Huai basin to the country’s parched north, Mao said.

“Large volumes of untreated domestic effluent and industrial waste-water are dumped directly into the river,” Mao said of one of the Huai’s worst polluted tributaries, according to the NPC Web site (www.npc.gov.cn).

“To judge from the inspection, the quality of water used for the South-North Water Transfer Project is threatened by pollution, and this must attract our vigilance.”

In Zhoukou city in central Henan province, 15 of 23 factories inspected were found to be illegally dumping waste, Mao said……. ( more details from Reuters’ report: Polluted China rivers threaten “sixth” of population)