Over seven hectares of Dianchi Lake, a scenic spot in southwest
China's Yunnan Province, have been polluted by waste
oil discharged by a dredger hired for environmental research, a
local official said on Thursday.
Eyewitness accounts say that the dredger intentionally poured
the oil into the water on Tuesday afternoon as it failed to be
equipped with the device to dispose of the waste oil it had
accumulated.
Despite efforts to clean up the oil, the pollutants dissolved
and spread in the water due to heavy rain and strong winds. The
local administration has sampled the water but no results have been
released.?
The dredger was hired to collect mud from the bottom of the lake
as part of an environmental protection research project by the
Chinese Academy of Sciences. It could be fined 100,000 yuan
(US$12,500), according to the local regulations.
Dianchi Lake is the largest freshwater lake on the
Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. China has invested over 4 billion yuan
(US$500 million) to solve environmental problems in the lake since
the 1990s.
(Xinhua News Agency October 13, 2006)