A consultancy program carried out by the Chinese Academy of
Engineering (CAE) shows that 79.1 percent of the?population in
northwest China live on heavily or moderately polluted water, Ren
Jizhou, an academician of CAE, told Guangming Daily
recently.
Water pollution is the main factor causing the increasingly
serious ecological and environmental pollution in northwest China,
according to Ren. He said that in the industrial and mining areas,
the current situation is indeed “terrible and shocking.”
The program report classifies the region’s water pollution into
three levels?-- heavily polluted, moderately polluted and not
yet obviously polluted.
Heavily polluted areas include the mainstreams of the Yellow
River, Weihe River and Shule River, and some sections of the Yili
River where 21 cities and prefectures are located. Water quality in
these areas stands at Grade V or lower, which cannot meet the
requirements of agricultural irrigation. Water in some sections has
even turned black and stinking. The Weihe River valley has become
one of the most heavily polluted areas in the country.
Though accounting for only 13 percent of the total acreage of
northwest China, the drainage areas of these heavily polluted
rivers are major industrial and mining areas with a densely
concentrated population, which accounts for 55.2 percent of the
region’s total.
Main pollutants in these river sections are COD (organic
pollutant), BOD (biological pollutant), and ammonia nitrogen.
Excessive heavy metal contents have also been found in the
mainstream of the Yellow River running through Gansu Province and
the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
In the moderately polluted areas, which cover 14 cities,
including Urumqi of the
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Baiyin of Gansu
Province and Tongchuan of Shaanxi
Province, water quality of major rivers stands at Grade IV. The
polluted drainage areas account for 27.2 percent of the region’s
total area, and the pollution-affected population account for 23.9
percent of the region’s total. The water quality can merely meet
the requirements of industrial and agricultural production, but is
not qualified as drinking water. These areas would soon become
heavily polluted if sewage discharging cannot be put under strict
control.
Not yet obviously polluted areas cover 27 cities, accounting for
59.8 percent of the total acreage of the region. However, most of
them are in desert areas with the population accounting for only
20.9 percent of the region’s total.
(China.org.cn by Zhang Tingting, January 8, 2004)