Want China Times
Staff Reporter
November 24 2014
14th International Living Lakes Conference held in Jiangxi province focuses on the protection of lakes in China on Nov. 20. (Photo/CNS)
Water safety has become a serious problem in China. Half of the nation’s 10 largest water systems are polluted, 40% of major lakes have pollution problems and 17 of the country’s 31 large freshwater lakes are polluted, the People’s Daily Online reports, citing various provincial research reports.
In Hebei province, Beijing and Tianjin, average water resources stand at just 286 cubic meters per capita, far below the international standard for extremely dry levels at 500 cubic meters per capita, while one-third of the region’s groundwater is already polluted.
The region’s major streams are all also heavily polluted, with third-level polluted waters exceeding 60%, according to a 2013 survey.
“Water safety problems have become the scourge of the nation,” said Lu Zhongmei, dean of Hubei University of Economics, who conducted research on environmental law for 30 years.
It’s not just the region, but the whole country which is seeing such problems. The nation’s surface water showed light pollution, and of the 10 major water systems the Yellow, Huaihe, Haihe, Liaohe and Songhua rivers were all polluted. Furthermore, 60% of the 4,778 groundwater monitoring stations had shown poor quality or extremely poor quality, according to a China environment yearbook in 2013.
In the yearbook, 17 out of the 31 large freshwater lakes in the country are rated medium-polluted or slightly-polluted, including Poyang Lake and Dongting Lake, both of which are seeing continuously dropping water levels.
Of the nation’s 657 cities, more than 300 remain at dry and extremely dry levels according to the standards of the United Nations.
The report attributed the main culprits for water pollution to be prior blind focus on development and high economic growth without thinking of the environmental consequences. Yet despite declining water supplies with consistently worsening quality, all provincial governments have continued to develop their steel, coal, petrochemical, construction materials, electricity, and paper making industries, all of which require high power consumption and create large amounts of pollution. Local governments just continue to ignore the environment, said Wang Jinnan, vice president of the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning at the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
