Prominent environmental activist Wu Lihong (吳立紅) plunges his hands into a thick layer of toxic green scum and brown foam floating on one of China’s biggest freshwater lakes.
Despite a two-decade battle to clean up the once-scenic Lake Tai that earned him three years in jail, Wu says the water still “stinks” from pollution.
“There’s no place in China that isn’t polluted. There’s no place in China that’s clean,” said Wu, 43, who called himself the “guardian of Lake Tai.”
Photo: AFP
Lake Tai lies on the border of the eastern provinces of -Zhejiang and Jiangsu in one of China’s richest regions, once known as the “land of fish and rice,” and is still a source of drinking water for the heavily populated area.
However, after three decades of explosive economic growth and lax enforcement of environmental protection laws, the lake — like most waterways in China — is heavily contaminated with toxic waste from surrounding factories and farms.
Wu, who remembers swimming in Lake Tai as a boy, started -campaigning to clean up the water in the late 1980s.
The former engineering equipment salesman has paid a high price for his environmental crusade, losing his job in 2001 and landing him in jail a few years later as his one-man battle embarrassed and angered local officials.
His once-portly frame has thinned somewhat and his black hair is speckled with white, which Wu attributes to his time in prison.
“There are only a few people like me making a fuss, but I’m not afraid,” said Wu, who was jailed in 2007 for extortion.
Wu has long proclaimed his innocence and said he was set up by the government of his native Yixing City, which was eager to protect the booming local industry from pollution controls.
Shortly after his arrest, a toxic algae bloom in Lake Tai contaminated water supplies for more than 2.3 million people in Wuxi City, which sits across the lake from Yixing, drawing nationwide attention to the issue.
Many of Wu’s supporters said the toxic pollution, which turned large parts of Lake Tai a murky green, should have led to the -activist’s release.
Wu was finally freed last year and was immediately ordered by police to stay quiet or “we will make you disappear.”
Authorities, anxious about the power of online social networking sites to organize protests, have also blocked Wu from accessing the Internet.
His rural home is constantly monitored by security cameras, he is routinely followed when he goes out and is not allowed to work.
However, Wu says he is undeterred, especially after discovering that the water quality of Lake Tai improved little during his time in jail despite government efforts to crack down on surrounding factories.
In its annual report last year on the country’s water quality, China’s environmental protection ministry gave Lake Tai its lowest rating.
Under China’s water quality classification system, that means the lake is “essentially useless” and can’t even be used for agriculture or landscaping, according to a World Bank report.
Wu accuses local officials of protecting factory bosses, who evade detection by discharging pollutants at night, trucking waste to other sites or channeling contaminated water into hastily dug ditches.
“They are too greedy,” Wu said of the officials willing to turn a blind eye to the pollution in the pursuit of economic growth and career advancement.
However, local authorities blame chemicals used by farmers for causing most of the toxins in the water, which have killed fish and other marine life.
The government has made efforts to clean up the lake, releasing millions of algae-eating fish into the water and recently ordering the closure of nearby sewerage discharge facilities and garbage dumps from Nov. 1.
It also pays squads of workers as little as 40 yuan (about US$6) a day to patrol the shoreline to collect garbage and suck up algae using a device like a giant vacuum cleaner.
However, a layer of green and brown sludge still pollutes the surface of the lake and Wu has vowed to keep up the fight.
“We live here,” he said, explaining his dedication. “We could swim in the water before.”
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS