China's environmental watchdog on Thursday rolled out an action
plan to slash pollution and improve the overall water quality of
the Songhua River.
Speaking at a conference, Zhou Shengxian, director of the State
Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), said that from here
on the banks of the Songhua would be cleared of all industrial
projects discharging non-biodegradable pollutants.
"Stricter standards on iron and steel projects will be
implemented to control the rapid growth of projects that consume
large amounts of energy and cause serious pollution," said Zhou.
All small paper mills and chemical plants along the river will be
shut down before the end of this year while more waste-water
treatment facilities will be set up, he specified. Since 2006,
governmental investment in the region has amounted to 7.75 billion
yuan (about US$1 billion) across 116 pollution control
projects.
Winding its way through Jilin and Heilongjiang, the 1,900-km-long Songhua River
irrigates 545,600 sq km of farmland in northeast China. It flows
into the Heilong River, which goes on to become the Amur River in
Russia. Thus, the international consequences of pollutants in the
Songhua can be measured as reports rise of worsening pollution in
the river and its tributaries.
A crisis arose last August when two trucks from Changbaishan
Jingxi Chemical Company carrying ten tons of toxic chemicals dumped
their loads into the Mangniu, a principal tributary of the
Songhua.
In November 2005, the northern city of Harbin was crippled as
water supplies to 3.8 million people were halted as authorities
scrambled to deal with around 100 tons of polluted waste containing
benzene having contaminated the Songhua after a chemical plant
explosion in Jilin.
"In a recent secret investigation of 82 polluting enterprises
along the river, SEPA found over 80 percent flouting national
standards in releasing pollutants,” said Zhu Xingxiang, director of
the environment evaluation department of SEPA. "We'll focus on
controlling the new sources of pollution in the coming year."
SEPA's current timetable would stabilize the river quality by
2008, and significantly improve it by 2010.
(Xinhua News Agency May 11, 2007)
