Clean Up the Dirt

It is reported that tap water in the city of Wuxi has reached acceptable standards after water was transferred from the Yangtze to waste-choked Taihu Lake augmented by heavy rainfall stimulated by rockets above the lake area.

Along with the cleanup is the news that higher standards will be imposed on the treated wastewater discharged into the lake. Behind this is the message that the treated wastewater was far from meeting required standards.

This disastrous contamination of drinking water for more than 4 million residents in Wuxi last week will hopefully become a catalyst for greater pollution control around the lake.

But the question that remains is how contamination could take place after a water pollution control project costing billions of yuan over seven years was in place.

More than 4.7 billion yuan ($618 million) has been spent in cleaning up the polluted water and controlling the discharge of wastewater into Dianchi Lake in Kunming, but almost in vain.

Far more money has been used in cleaning up the Huaihe River, but the river water remains dirty and foul smelling. The same is true of other major waterways and lakes.

A project that will cost 100 billion yuan ($13 billion) is expected to clean up Taihu Lake’s heavy pollution while effectively controlling the discharge of wastewater into the fresh water lake.

Yet, with the unsuccessful pollution control projects as examples, we have reason to question whether the supervisory mechanism exists to ensure that every yuan will be used where it is needed.

What we need to do right now is to make public how the huge sums of money were used in the previous pollution control projects. The funds seem to have been thrown away, leaving the public and the environment to suffer.

Knowledge about why and how the previous efforts failed will help us establish a clear-cut program for future control.

In addition, a mechanism must be established to make the spending of pollution-control money transparent to both the auditors and the public.

Only with this mechanism effectively functioning can we expect that the money and human resources expended will make a difference in pollution control and that the contamination of drinking water like the Wuxi incident will not happen again.

(c) 2007 China Daily; North American ed.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.