Water Pollution and Scarcity in China
Fr. Seán McDonagh, SSC
Water shortages and pollution is becoming a major problem in China as the
country has become the workshop of the world. In December 2012, 39 tons of the
toxic chemical aniline spilled from a factory owned by the Tianji Coal Chemical
Industry Group in Changzhi in China's Shanxi and polluted drinking water for
hundreds of thousands of people downstream along the Zhuozhang River. It took
almost one month for the spill to be announced to the public.
Greenpeace China sent a team of investigators to find out exactly what had
happened. To their amazement, the real story turned out to be not the chemical
spill but the fact that water consumption by coal and chemical industries in Shanxi
province was drying up all the water resources in the area.
Reliable sources predict that by 2015, water consumption by coal and chemical
industry in China's dry, western areas is set to use up a quarter of the water flowing
annually in the nearby Yellow River, which is known in China as the “Mother
River.” The Tianji Coal Chemical Industry Group alone uses as much water as a
city of 300,000 people would consume.
Coal and chemical companies use
enormous amounts of water, not just in China, but across the world.
In March 2013, the carcasses of 6,000 pigs were taken from the Huangpu river,
near Shanghai city which is home to approximately 23 million people. It seemed
that farmers in the nearby city of Jiaxing had simply dumped the carcasses into the
river, rather than pay the cost of either burying or incinerating the pigs. The
incident is under investigation. It is unclear where the pigs were raised, it might
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have been elsewhere.”
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A local official Wang Dengfeng said that “we do not
exclude that the possibility that the pigs came from Jiaxing, but we are not
absolutely sure. Given that approach it is likely that when the authorities claimed
that there was no risk to public health, few people believed them.
Speaking out about environmental pollution can often cost someone dearly. Chen
Zuqian, a Chinese farmers believed that a local paper mill had polluted his local
river, leading to a mysterious illness in his family. In an effort to publicized the
pollution and the devastating impact it was having in his area he offered a cash
prize to any environmental protection officers who would agree to
swim in
polluted rivers was assaulted by more than a dozen people who broke into his
home and wrecked it. Mr. Chen called the police, but they said they were in a
difficult situation and took no action. Chen’s daughter said that her father’s injuries
meant that he was on a drip for three days after his house was ransacked and he
was assaulted.
One fifth of China’s rivers are so polluted that the water quality is too poisonous
for human consumption, even though China has spent more than €86 billion on
water infrastructures during the period from 2005 to 2010. Many rivers throughout
China have been affected by algae blooms in recent years caused by fertilizer
runoff, chemicals spills and untreated sewage.2
Industrial planners in China are well aware that water is a major challenge as the
country continues to industrializes. It is estimated that, since the drive toward
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Brynmor Pattison, “Bay of Pigs…. 6,000 bodies found in river,” Irish Daily Mirror, page 25.
2
Clifford Coonan, “Pollution Activist Assaulted in China,” The Irish Times, March 1st 2013, page 11.
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industrialization began under Dung Cha Ping almost 40 years ago that, 13 percent
of China's lakes have disappeared, half its coastal wetlands have been lost to
reclamation and 50 percent of cities left without drinking water that meets
acceptable hygienic standards. The United Nations has singled China out as one of
13 countries with extreme water shortages.
It would appear that, for now,
the government is split between small-scale,
practical solutions to the problem and huge engineering projects, such as the
South-North water diversion scheme, which aims to transfer water from the rainy
south to the dry north but has been widely criticized by environmentalists as too
big, inefficient and ultimately unworkable.
Michael Bennett, an environmental economist, was quoted as saying, "My heart is
really out for the leadership trying to come up with solutions because China's just
so maddeningly complex."
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He points to the widespread, small-scale,
government-approved water conservation programs taking place around the
country. When asked whether ill China solve its really serious water problems?
He points out that the trend is in the right direction, but questions whether it is
going fast enough.
3
Brynmor Patterson, op.cit.,
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