Pollution is turning China's key waterway, the Yangtze, into a dead river, unable to sustain marine life or provide drinking water to the booming cities along its course, state media said yesterday.
The river, China's longest, cuts through the country's most heavily populated regions, sweeping along with it 40 percent of all waste water produced, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Of roughly 22.7 billion tonnes of waste water a year, less than 20 percent is treated before it flows into the river, Xinhua said.
PHOTO: AP
The report cited remarks by Lu Jianjian (陸健健), a professor at Shanghai's East China Normal University and a member of the government's main national policy advisory body.
The effects of pollution have been seen in the reduction of the number of animal species living in the river from 126 in the mid-1980s, to just 52 as of 2002, Lu was cited as saying.
"Many officials think the pollution is nothing for the Yangtze, which has a large water flow and a certain capability of self-cleaning, but the pollution is actually very serious," Yuan Aiguo (袁愛國), a professor with the China University of Geosciences based in Wuhan, was quoted as saying.
Pollution has forced cities that use the Yangtze for some or all of their drinking water to move plants further upstream to find usable supplies, including Shanghai.
Without measures to reduce pollution, up to 70 percent of Yangtze water could be classed as unusable within five years, Xinhua quoted Yuan as saying.
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