Cross-posted at the Ecotality Blog.
China’s Yellow River, commonly referred to as the Cradle of Chinese Civilization is the 2nd longest river in China and the 7th longest in the world. It’s also an industrial dumping ground and is fast turning into an environmental nightmare.
Here’s a photo taken on November 21, 2006 of a section of the Yellow River in Lanzhou, the capitol of northwest China’s Gansu Province.
China Dialogue spoke to some of the citizens who share the air with the laughably regulated polluters.
"Living here takes a decade off our lives," sighs our taxi driver, looking into the black smog ahead. We are in the town of Gongwusu, where Ningxia province meets Inner Mongolia. The driver often takes motorway 108 or 109 to destinations on either side of the border. "Everywhere the sky is full of black fumes, like storm clouds. You can’t see the sun; even in the daytime you need to put your headlights on."
One of these industrial zones is built on pastureland famous in the past for the quality of its cashmere, made from its native Alpas goats. One of the Mongolian herders tells us: "Since 2004, each household has had a dozen or more goats die every year. Even the cashmere is blackened." Two hundred sheep graze in the shadow of 20 fuming chimneys. A kilometre-long black line runs towards us beside the motorway. "That used to be a riverbed. Then last year the limestone factory started dumping their waste here," he says. Only two kilometres to the east is a fenced-off nature reserve. This herder is one of the few to remain here. Most have given up their flocks to try and make a living in the town. "In future, there might not be any of us left," he sighs.
A small town 10 kilometres southwest of Gongwusu grew up around a chemical factory now sold to a Guangdong businessman, who also installed a power plant. The factory effluent filters out through a series of ponds into a creek which flows into the Yellow River. Solid waste is dumped by truck into a deep hollow not far from the river. The factory has its own rail line; the carriages waiting to be loaded are clearly marked: "Danger! Poison!" Further to the southwest lies another industrial zone, with chimneys spewing black smoke that rolls towards the Yellow River. You do not get many clear days there either. A worker in a local orchard tells me: "Whole batches of trees die off every year." Sixty of the trees he is responsible for have died in four years. The factory’s steaming, muddy effluent is fed straight into the Yellow River, which the orchard draws on for water to irrigate its trees.
The annual report by the Yellow River Water Resources Committee lists these stats about the state of the river in 2005:
Only 33.3 percent of the water is category 3 -- ok for drinking, aquatic breeding, fisheries or swimming, down from 40 percent in the 1990s...
More than 4.35 billion tons of waste water were dumped into the Yellow River in 2005, about 88 million tons more than last year, according to the report.
More than 73 percent of the waste water was discharged from factories, 298 million tons more than last year, the report said.