Forget idyllic country settings with clear streams or the smell of daisies in the air. What villagers have to put up with in Xiazhuang Village in Yixing City, Jiangsu Province, are ink-colored rivers, garbage strewn everywhere, lawns overgrown with weeds, and the foul odor of rotting food and waste.

 

Several villages in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces resemble Xiazhuang, according to a Xinhua News Agency report on August 30. Waste and garbage of every kind imaginable are carelessly dumped in the open, posing a serious threat to people's health and the environment.

 

In Shanglian Village, Wujiang City, garbage is dumped into rivers at the village entrance. Several chemical plants are located nearby. Even the drinking water plant is not spared; trash is littered all around it.

 

"A dozen of young people in the village have died from cancer," said 60-year-old villager Yu Hailong.

 

The primary source of pollution is from industrial companies, many of which have no proper waste discharge system. Companies from outside the area also dump their waste in the village.

 

"The rivers used to be clear, but now they are polluted by the wastewater from scores of chemical plants nearby," said a villager surnamed Pan from Xiazhuang.

 

Another source of pollution is agricultural waste. Large quantities of crop stalks and animal feces are dumped into rivers.

 

"There is a pig farm behind this river. The excrement from several hundred pigs and wastewater are directly discharged into the river. In summer, flies are buzzing about. And the excrement and other garbage float when the river water rises during the rainy season," said a villager surnamed Zhu from Sanyou Village.

 

Agricultural chemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers add to the pollution. An inspection of five vegetable bases in south Jiangsu by the Nanjing Soil Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) revealed that soil pollution exceeded acceptable standards.

 

Statistics show that the per capita output and composition of garbage in rural areas are approaching those of urban areas. The quantity of agricultural solid wastes far exceeds that of industrial solid wastes.

 

A considerable part of the waste in rural areas is directly discharged into the environment without proper treatment, causing serious water, soil and air pollution.

 

Over the past 20 years, chemical fertilizers have been used as a substitute to organic fertilizers, such as human and animal excrement, in Jiangsu. This has put the environment under the strain of both chemical fertilizer and excrement pollution, according to Wu Tianma, an expert with Jiangsu Provincial Environmental Protection Office.

 

Wu said that in the province, less than 33.3 percent of 45 million tons of plant stalks are used as fertilizer for the fields and less than 50 percent of the excrement of domestic animals and fowls are recycled. Less than 10 percent of the excrement of domestic animals and fowls produced by large-scale breeding farms are decontaminated.

 

Higher economic returns have prompted farmers to engage in industrial work or business. A lot of rural labor have migrated to the cities, leaving fewer people to manage the labor and time-consuming farm work, Liu Jiamo, deputy head of Sheyang County in Jiangsu, said.

 

Liu said that some new farming equipment and methods cannot transform plant stalks into fertilizer for the fields. The stalks are either burned or simply thrown into rivers.

 

Furthermore, liquefied petroleum gas and coal have become commonly used as fuel in Jiangsu's villages and less biological energy sources are used.

 

It is a serious situation in Jiangsu and Zhejiang where little capital has been invested in environmental protection infrastructures in the rural areas. Environment protection officials are also in great shortage.

 

(Xinhua News Agency, translated by Yuan Fang for China.org.cn, September 6, 2005)