Saturday, April 07, 2007

Water pollution in Dongting Lake


The Tale of the White Serpent, a household story in China, is set in Dongting Lake. The beautiful romance of the lovers of Bai Shuzhen and Louyi is gone with this seriously polluted lake.

Hunan provincial government ordered all paper mills in the area of Dongting Lake, the second largest fresh-water lake to close until they could reduce water pollution to meet the standard.

Dongting Lake has been reduced to half its original area of 5,000 square kilometres by reclamation, mostly for growing weed as raw material for paper mill. Last year, the paper mills discharged over 100 million tons of waste water into the lake. Standing by the lakeside, you could see bubble and black or brown pollutant. The people living in the area have relied on this like as source of drinking water for a long time. But now the quality of the water is below the safety standard and fishing is almost impossible.

But the order of plant closure results in county governments' financial difficulties. For example, there are seven paper mills in Nan county. The county government would lose HK$20 million in tax if all paper mills were shut down for one year. And a large number of workers would also be sacked.

If one looks at the problems closely, one will find out the short-sighted calculations of the local governments and enterprises are the root cause. One set of environmental protection equipment only costs about 1 million yuan and it would only increase the production cost by less than 1%. Why didn't the paper mill install the equipment earlier? Why didn't the local governments enforce the regulations earlier?

Sources:
All paper mills close on Dongting Lake
洞庭湖污染十分嚴重

Photo: Steve Webel

Labels: , , ,

2 Comments:

At 5:20 PM, Blogger Unknown said...


This kind of weather was predicted by scientist, Mojib Latif who last year predicted that earth was going to cool off for the next 20-30 years.The cooling would be the result of changes to ocean currents and temperatures in the North Atlantic, a feature known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the NAO may be partly the cause of warming during the past 30 years.

predict science

prdictions

who is edgar casey

cayce edga

are edgar cayce

what is the environment

environment topics

environment

seminar topics

water pollution

topics on the environment

topics for environment

 
At 1:07 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

lunette oakley pas cher, nike roshe run pas cher, lululemon outlet, hollister uk, jordan pas cher, coach purses, lunette ray ban pas cher, nike tn pas cher, hogan sito ufficiale, abercrombie and fitch, new balance, longchamp soldes, nike blazer pas cher, true religion outlet, true religion outlet, michael kors, replica handbags, michael kors, sac guess pas cher, ray ban uk, nike air max, mulberry uk, vans pas cher, abercrombie and fitch UK, louboutin pas cher, nike air max pas cher, coach outlet store online, nike free pas cher, true religion jeans, polo lacoste pas cher, true religion outlet, nike air max uk, ralph lauren pas cher, kate spade outlet, longchamp pas cher, nike air force, polo ralph lauren uk, hermes pas cher, michael kors uk, north face uk, timberland pas cher, vanessa bruno pas cher, nike free, michael kors outlet online, coach outlet, nike air max uk, burberry pas cher, north face pas cher, converse

 

Post a Comment

<< Home