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Water Pollution: Causes, Effects and ControlAuthor：P. K. Goel

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Water Pollution: Causes, Effects and ControlAuthor：P. K. Goel

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Water Pollution: Causes, Effects And Control Is A Book Providing Comprehensive Information On The Fundamentals And Latest Developments In The Field Of Water Pollution.The Book Is Divided Into 28 Chapters Covering Almost All The Aspect Of Water Pollution Including Water Resources And General Properties Of Water; History Of Water Pollution

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 Integrated Reform Plan for Promoting Ecological Progress

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 Integrated Reform Plan for Promoting Ecological Progress

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It is crucial to fully implement the guiding principles from the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the second, third, and fourth plenary sessions of the 18th CPC Central Committee; follow the guidance of Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of the Three Represents, and the

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2.1 billion people lack safe drinking water at home, more than twice as many lack safe sanitation

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2.1 billion people lack safe drinking water at home, more than twice as many lack safe sanitation

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Some 3 in 10 people worldwide, or 2.1 billion, lack access to safe, readily available water at home, and 6 in 10, or 4.5 billion, lack safely managed sanitation, according to a new report by WHO and UNICEF.

The Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) report, Progress on drinking water, sanitation and hygiene: 2017 update and Sustainable Development Goal baselines, presents the first global assessment of "safely managed" drinking water and sanitation services. The overriding conclusion is that too many people still lack access, particularly in rural areas.

"Safe water, sanitation and hygiene at home should not be a privilege of only those who are rich or live in urban centres," says Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. "These are some of the most basic requirements for human health, and all countries have a responsibility to ensure that everyone can access them."

Billions of people have gained access to basic drinking water and sanitation services since 2000, but these services do not necessarily provide safe water and sanitation. Many homes, healthcare facilities and schools also still lack soap and water for handwashing. This puts the health of all people - but especially young children - at risk for diseases, such as diarrhoea.

As a result, every year, 361 000 children under 5 years of age die due to diarrhoea. Poor sanitation and contaminated water are also linked to transmission of diseases such as cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A, and typhoid.

"Safe water, effective sanitation and hygiene are critical to the health of every child and every community - and thus are essential to building stronger, healthier, and more equitable societies," said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake. "As we improve these services in the most disadvantaged communities and for the most disadvantaged children today, we give them a fairer chance at a better tomorrow."

Significant inequalities persist

In order to decrease global inequalities, the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call for ending open defecation and achieving universal access to basic services by 2030.

Of the 2.1 billion people who do not have safely managed water, 844 million do not have even a basic drinking water service. This includes 263 million people who have to spend over 30 minutes per trip collecting water from sources outside the home, and 159 million who still drink untreated water from surface water sources, such as streams or lakes.

In 90 countries, progress towards basic sanitation is too slow, meaning they will not reach universal coverage by 2030.

Of the 4.5 billion people who do not have safely managed sanitation, 2.3 billion still do not have basic sanitation services. This includes 600 million people who share a toilet or latrine with other households, and 892 million people - mostly in rural areas - who defecate in the open. Due to population growth, open defecation is increasing in sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania.

Good hygiene is one of the simplest and most effective ways to prevent the spread of disease. For the first time, the SDGs are monitoring the percentage of people who have facilities to wash their hands at home with soap and water. According to the new report, access to water and soap for handwashing varies immensely in the 70 countries with available data, from 15 per cent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa to 76 per cent in western Asia and northern Africa.

Additional key findings from the report include:

Many countries lack data on the quality of water and sanitation services. The report includes estimates for 96 countries on safely managed drinking water and 84 countries on safely managed sanitation.

In countries experiencing conflict or unrest, children are 4 times less likely to use basic water services, and 2 times less likely to use basic sanitation services than children in other countries.

There are big gaps in service between urban and rural areas. Two out of three people with safely managed drinking water and three out of five people with safely managed sanitation services live in urban areas. Of the 161 million people using untreated surface water (from lakes, rivers or irrigation channels), 150 million live in rural areas.

Note to editors

Safely managed drinking water and sanitation services means drinking water free of contamination that is available at home when needed, and toilets whereby excreta are treated and disposed of safely.

Basic services mean having a protected drinking water source that takes less than thirty minutes to collect water from, using an improved toilet or latrine that does not have to be shared with other households, and having handwashing facilities with soap and water in the home.

Sustainable Development Goal 6 is to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. The JMP monitors progress on the following two targets:

Target 6.1: By 2030, achieve universal and equitable access to safe water and sanitation for all.

Target 6.2 By 2030, achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations.

The JMP also contributes to monitoring of SDG 1 "to end poverty in all its forms everywhere", and "to SDG 4 to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all" by contributing data on basic water, sanitation and hygiene for the following targets:

Target 1.4: By 2030, ensure that all men and women, in particular the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to basic services.

Target 4.a: Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, non-violent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all.

Safe water, sanitation and hygiene are also essential to SDG 3 "Ensuring healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages". Under SDG target 3.9, countries are working to substantially reduce the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals and air, water and soil pollution and contamination by 2030. Additionally, safe water, sanitation and hygiene are needed to reduce maternal mortality and to end preventable deaths of newborns and children as called for in SDG targets 3.1 and 3.2.

About the Joint Monitoring Programme

The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene is the official United Nations mechanism tasked with monitoring country, regional and global progress, and especially towards the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals relating to universal and equitable access to drinking water, sanitation and hygiene. Thanks to the globally supported household surveys, JMP analysis helps draw connections between use of basic water and sanitation facilities and quality of life, and serves as an authoritative reference to make policy decisions and resource allocations, especially at the international level.

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2.1 billion people lack safe drinking water at home, more than twice as many lack safe sanitation

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Some 3 in 10 people worldwide, or 2.1 billion, lack access to safe, readily available water at home, and 6 in 10 people, or 4.5 billion, lack safely managed sanitation, according to a new report by WHO and UNICEF.

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China’s environmental future: The power of the people

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China’s environmental future: The power of the people

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Well-informed and highly engaged activists are pushing China's government to do more.

China faces a deep and enduring environmental crisis. Less than 1 percent of the country's 500 largest cities meet World Health Organization clean-air criteria. More than one-quarter of China's land is either desert or facing desertification. At least ten provinces are below the World Bank's water poverty level, and up to 40 percent of China's rivers are reported to be seriously polluted (20 percent are so polluted that the water is too toxic for human contact). In conjunction with ongoing crises-Beijing being enveloped in smog; more than 16,000 dead, diseased pigs floating down Shanghai's Huangpu River; reports of toxic cadmium-laced rice being sold in Guangdong Province-it's no wonder there are serious questions about the effectiveness of the Chinese government's efforts to balance economic growth and environmental protection.

China's leaders say they recognize the challenge at hand. In a 2011 editorial, Environment Minister Zhou Shengxian said the "depletion, deterioration, and exhaustion of resources and the worsening ecological environment have become bottlenecks and grave impediments to the nation's economic and social development." And former Premier Wen Jiabao acknowledged in March 2012 that the government had failed to meet most of the environmental targets in China's 11th five-year plan, including reductions in energy intensity, nitrogen and sulfur dioxide, and water-pollution measures. Leaders are well aware that the state of the environment is a leading cause of social unrest, as well as one of the most important contributors to a range of public-health issues ranging from respiratory disease to cancer and developmental delays and deficiencies. And it hurts the economy: a study by the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning (CAEP) estimated the cost of pollution spills, deteriorating soil, vanishing wetlands, and other environmental issues at 3.9 percent of Chinese GDP in 2008.

Yet Beijing's response to these challenges is far from sufficient. Investment in environmental protection continues to hover around 1.3 percent of GDP, but according to a 2007 CAEP report, roughly half of this money is lost through local corruption or the allocation of environmental funds to nonenvironment-related projects. And despite official policy, one recent academic study found that local officials are rewarded more for investing in infrastructure than for making environmental protection an explicit priority. Year after year, the government sets impressive targets for pollution reduction, launches massive campaigns to divert or clean up rivers and reforest degraded land, invests in renewable energy and technologies, and undertakes experiments with eco-cities. And year after year, there is the same poor outcome: the environment deteriorates.

Fortunately, the Chinese people are pushing the government to do more. They have recognized that these environmental problems are systemic and, through their activism, are laying the foundation to transform China's environmental protection. As a first step, the Chinese people appear to recognize that good environmental policy depends upon open and accurate environmental data. Nongovernmental organizations such as the Institute for Public and Environmental Affairs are pressing Chinese cities to adhere to regulations requiring them to publish pollution statistics. One Chinese lawyer is pushing for the Ministry of Environmental Protection to release the results of its soil pollution survey, which it has deemed a "state secret." The media is producing eye-opening, in-depth investigative reports on environmental problems such as water pollution. And in 2012, Beijing and other cities were forced to reveal levels of hazardous particulate material air pollution after the United States embassy and consulates tweeted data and ignited an Internet firestorm among the Chinese public, which demanded that the government provide the statistics.

At the same time, grassroots pressure is mounting for the environment to serve as a general model for the rule of law and official accountability. Already, Chinese environmental lawyers have established around 100 specialized environmental courts. Their next step is to make it easier for environmental cases to be brought by more than a limited number of officially sanctioned organizations. And when Chinese officials fail to protect the environment, the Chinese people take to the Web and to the streets to hold them accountable. From July to October 2012, for example, large-scale protests broke out in three provinces-Sichuan, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang-when local officials approved factories and other projects the public believed would be harmful to their health. Through social media and microblogs, Chinese citizens gained access to information critical to effective demonstrations. And in each case, the local government halted its plans. While political participation through protest may not be ideal, Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs founder Ma Jun said the fear of public demonstrations is forcing some local governments to think twice about how they govern.

Of course, public activism alone won't transform China's environment-Beijing needs to step up. So what could indicate that the Chinese government is making real progress toward environmental protection? First, if Beijing invests more in financial and human capital: Chinese scientists say government investment in the environment should be at least 2.2 percent of GDP just to prevent further deterioration. Second, if the National People's Congress develops environmental laws and regulations that are sufficiently detailed to ensure proper enforcement. Third, if government develops a system of political and economic incentives and disincentives (as they are discussing with regard to a new carbon tax) that encourage local officials and businesspeople to do the right thing. And fourth, if Beijing views nongovernmental organizations, the media, and the public as partners rather than adversaries, improving access to information and enlisting public participation.

If current trends hold, an additional 300 million Chinese will become urban residents by 2030, consuming as much as four times more energy and two and a half times more water per capita than rural Chinese. That makes it all the more critical that Chinese officials become more like the Chinese people: more informed, more engaged, and less patient. In this respect, China seems destined to evolve very much like every other country that has developed before it: with environmental progress driven from the bottom-up.

About the author(s)

Elizabeth Economy is the director for Asia studies and the C. V. Starr senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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China's environmental future: The power of the people

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Well-informed and highly engaged activists are pushing China's government to do more. China faces a deep and enduring environmental crisis. Less than 1 percent of the country's 500 largest cities meet World Health Organization clean-air criteria. More than one-quarter of China's land is either desert or facing desertification.

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China Jails Environmental Activist For 'Revealing State Secrets'

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China Jails Environmental Activist For 'Revealing State Secrets'

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Authorities in the southern Chinese province of Hunan have jailed a prominent environmentalist on charges of "revealing state secrets" in a move that activists said is likely a form of political revenge.

Liu Shu was taken away from her home in the provincial capital Changsha on Sunday night and sentenced to 10 days' administrative detention for "revealing state secrets related to China's counterespionage work."

Liu founded and runs the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Shuguang, which has campaigned for compensation and redress for victims of environmental pollution.

A Shuguang volunteer who asked to remain anonymous appeared to suggest that Liu's detention had political implications.

"This is a pretty sensitive topic, and it's not easy for us to give media interviews right now," the volunteer said. "As you can see from the online information, this involves matters of state security, and our lawyer is currently following up the matter."

Asked what aspects of Liu's work had touched on matters of "national security," the volunteer said a number of environmental issues might be considered highly sensitive information by Chinese officials.

"Issues to do with threats to public health, for example the investigation into levels of heavy metals in the waters of Dongting Lake," the volunteer said.

Asked if Liu's computers and other possessions had been seized, the volunteer said: "In matters of state security, there are certain processes which must be followed, but unfortunately we can't discuss the details with you."

Dubious charges

Hunan-based rights lawyer Wen Donghai said the charges against Liu looked highly dubious.

"This so-called counterespionage that they are talking about ought to indicate military matters, and people or organizations beyond China's borders spying on them," Wen said.

"Environmental pollution is a globally recognized problem, and one that people are working hard to rectify," he said. "It is a social issue, and has nothing to do with the safety of the regime."

"These charges are definitely trumped up, and the police are abusing their powers," he said.

A source close to the situation told RFA that Liu stands accused of supplying data to an unidentified contact about environmental pollution.

"If this proves to be true, then this is a serious violation of her rights," the source. "It's also a serious attack on the freedom of expression."

A police-run committee can hand down administrative sentences of up to 15 days to perceived troublemakers without the need for a trial.

However, such sentences may also be converted to criminal detention, resulting in a lengthy spell in a police-run detention center while investigations are carried out.

Worsening levels of air and water pollution, as well as disputes over the effects of heavy metals from mining and industry, have forced ordinary Chinese to become increasingly involved in environmental protection and protest, according to a 2013 report from the Friends of Nature group.

Many ordinary citizens have been prompted into action by China's environmental crisis, sparking a rise in "mass incidents" linked to pollution, while environmental groups have raised growing concerns over the falsification of pollution testing and environmental impact assessments.

Campaigners say that China has an exemplary set of environmental protection legislation, but that close ties between business and officials mean that it is rarely enforced at a local level.

Reported by Yang Fan for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Wong Siu-san and Lam Lok-tung for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

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China Jails Environmental Activist For 'Revealing State Secrets'

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Authorities in the southern Chinese province of Hunan have jailed a prominent environmentalist on charges of "revealing state secrets" in a move that activists said is likely a form of political revenge. Liu Shu was taken away from her home in the provincial capital Changsha on Sunday night and sentenced to 10 days' administrative detention for "revealing state secrets related to China's counterespionage work."

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Student Activists Are Mapping China’s Widening Water Pollution

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Student Activists Are Mapping China’s Widening Water Pollution

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Even the official figures show China has a serious water pollution problem: in 2014, the government said 60% of of the country's underground water is contaminated. But these statistics don't tell the whole story. In many places, testing isn't done regularly and there's a big demand for local information, according to Charlene Ren, a Chinese clean water activist.

Ren has created the MyH2O's Water Mapping Network which takes measurements from on-the-ground student teams and tags it to interactive maps. By recording water quality in thousands of wells and boreholes across China, she hopes to prompt action by water companies, foundations and, perhaps, by officialdom as well.

"This is a great way [for local people] to get a sense of what's in their water and what they can do about it. We focus on these areas that are really far away and disconnected from a central systems where people are not really going in to help," she says.

Ren hopes to emulate the success of air pollution campaigners who have spurred government action through citizen testing efforts. MyH2O works with teams of student environmentalists who use cheap color-change testing kits. The students then upload their results to the map-nitrate, magnesium, arsenic, ammonium, nitrogen, chromium, PH, and so on-along with photos and some commentary.

So far, 30 teams have submitted 2,000 sets of results, while another 50 teams have applied to take part in the program this summer. For example, one team worked in the remote and autonomous Xishuangbanna Dai prefecture, in Yunnan, in southern China.

Ren studied physics at Vassar College and is currently completing a master's in environmental engineering & policy at MIT. She recently became a 2016 Echoing Green fellow, which comes with an unconditional grant of $80,000-$90,000. She plans to use the money to sign up more teams, build a stronger data platform, and tie up more partnerships with water nonprofits and companies.

"The water companies and foundations have been telling us 'We want active results in these regions so we can figure out where to target solutions.' We already have a lot of teams working on this. But we really want these results to be put to good use so these problems can get solved," she says.

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Student Activists Are Mapping China's Widening Water Pollution

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Even the official figures show China has a serious water pollution problem: in 2014, the government said 60% of of the country's underground water is contaminated. But these statistics don't tell the whole story. In many places, testing isn't done regularly and there's a big demand for local information, according to Charlene Ren, a Chinese clean water activist.

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A psychological look into the effects the Water Crisis has had on the citizens of Flint, Michigan.  

Check out the full interactive version at https://verse.com/thenewyorker/299-everything-water-touches/

Directed by Zackary Canepari and Jessica Dimmock
Produced by Liza Faktor/Screen
Edited by Joshua Banville
Original Music by Matthew Joynt and Nathan Sandberg 
Sound Mix by Bryan Scary

Special thanks to Verse

Featuring the Voices of 
Eric Woodyard
Thomas and Shirley Rowan
Sabrina Hernandez
Dusable Lewis
Jayden Crutchfield
Brittany Clark
Carmen Neumann
Shanique Hopkins
Briana Shields
Maliyah Nichols
Quisha Brown

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Water shortages and water pollution in China are such a problem that the World Bank warns of "catastrophic consequences for future generations." Half of China's population lacks safe drinking water. Nearly two thirds of China's rural population---more than 500 million people---use water contaminated by human and industrial waste.

In Yale University's 2012 Environmental Performance Index, China is one of the worst performers (ranked 116 out of 132 countries) with respect to its performance on changes in water quantity due to consumption, including industrial, agricultural, and household uses. Jonathan Kaiman wrote in The Guardian, "The head of China's ministry of water resources said in 2012 that up to 40 percent of the country's rivers are "seriously polluted", and an official report from the summer od 2012 found that up to 200 million rural Chinese have no access to clean drinking water. China's lakes are often affected by pollution-induced algae blooms, causing the surface of the water to turn a bright iridescent green. Yet even greater threats may lurk underground. A recent government study found that groundwater in 90 percent of China's cities is contaminated, most of it severely. [Source: Jonathan Kaiman, The Guardian, February 21, 2013]

In summer of 2011, the China government reported 43 percent of state-monitored rivers are so polluted, they're unsuitable for human contact. By one estimate one sixth of China's population is threatened by seriously polluted water. One study found that eight of 10 Chinese coastal cities discharge excessive amounts of sewage and pollutants into the sea, often near coastal resorts and sea farming areas. Water pollution is especially bad along the coastal manufacturing belt. Despite the closure of thousands of paper mills, breweries, chemical factories and other potential sources of contamination, the water quality along a third of the waterway falls far below even the modest standards that the government requires. Most of China's rural areas have no system in place to treat waste water.

A study by China's Environmental Protection Agency in February 2010 said that water pollution levels were double what the government predicted them to be mainly because agricultural waste was ignored. China's first pollution census in 2010 revealed farm fertilizer was a bigger source of water contamination than factory effluent.

Water consumed by people in China contains dangerous levels of arsenic, fluorine and sulfates. An estimated 980 million of China's 1.3 billion people drink water every day that is partly polluted. More than 600 million Chinese drink water contaminated with human or animal wastes and 20 million people drink well water contaminated with high levels of radiation. A large number of arsenic-tainted water have been discovered. China's high rates of liver, stomach and esophageal cancer have been linked to water pollution.

Water pollution and shortages are a more serious problem in northern China than southern China. The percentage of water considered unfit for human consumption is 45 percent in northern China, compared to 10 percent in southern China. Some 80 percent of the rivers in the northern province of Shanxi have been rated "unfit for human contact."

A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center before the 2008 Olympics found that 68 percent of the Chinese interviewed said they were concerned about water pollution.

Websites and Resources

water pollution Good Websites and Sources: PBS Audio Visual on China's Water Problems pbs.org ; China Water Pollution Map by Ma Jun for the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. Zoom any city or click a river or lake and get the latest pollution readings. China Water Pollution Map, en.ipe.org.cn; 2010 Article on Water Pollution and Farmers circleofblue.org Greenpeace China article greenpeace.org/china ;Wikipedia article on China's Water Crisis Wikipedia ; Articles on Water Pollution scipeeps.com Water Pollution Photos stephenvoss.com

YANGTZE RIVER : Wikipedia Wikipedia ; China Highlights China Highlights ; Book; River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler (HarperCollins, 2001); YELLOW RIVER Wikipedia Wikipedia University of Massachusetts U Mass ; Yellow River Conservancy Commission Yellow River Conservancy Commission ; Map on China Highlights China Highlights LAKE TAI : Wikipedia Wikipedia Lonely Planet Lonely Planet

Book: The River Runs Black by Elizabeth C. Economy (Cornell, 2004) is one of the best recently-written books on China's environmental problems. In his book China on the Edge: the Crisis of Ecology and Development in China, the Chinese intellectual He Bochun argues that in many ways China's environmental problems have already reached catastrophic levels.

On the Environment: China Environmental News Blog china-environmental-news.blogspot.com ; China.Org (Chinese Government Environmental News china.org.cn/english/environment ; New York Times Multimedia Series on Pollution in China nytimes.com ; China's Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) english.mep.gov.cn ; EIN News Service's China Environment News einnews.com/china/newsfeed-china-environment Wikipedia article on Environment of China ; Wikipedia ; China Environmental Protection Foundation (a Chinese Government Organization) cepf.org.cn/cepf_english ;Global Environmental Institute (a Chinese non-profit NGO) geichina.org ; Beijing Energy Network (a Chinese grassroots environmental group) greenleapforward.com ; Greenpeace China greenpeace.org/china/en ; China Digital Times Collection of Articles chinadigitaltimes.net ; Brief History of Chinese Environment planetark.com ; Article on Wetlands Degradation library.utoronto.ca ; Useful But Dated Source List on te Environment and China newton.uor.edu ; China Environmental Forum at the Wilson Center wilsoncenter.org ; International Fund for China's Environment ifce.org ; China Watch worldwatch.org ; China Environmental law Blog chinaenvironmentallaw.com ; World Resources Institute wri.org ; China Environmental Industry Network cein.net

Links in this Website: ENVIRONMENT IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; GLOBAL WARMING IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; AIR POLLUTION IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; WATER POLLUTION IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; WATER SHORTAGES IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; DEFORESTATION AND DESERTIFICATION IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; GARBAGE AND RECYCLING IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ;ENVIRONMENT, GOVERNMENT POLICY AND FIGHTING POLLUTION IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; Factsanddetails.com/China ; ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS AND PROTESTS IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; THE 2008 OLYMPICS IN BEIJING, POLLUTION WEATHER Factsanddetails.com/China ; LAND AND GEOGRAPHY OF CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; WEATHER IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; DAMS AND HYDRO POWER IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; THREE GORGES AND THREE GORGES DAM Factsanddetails.com/China ; COAL IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; NUCLEAR POWER AND ALTERNATIVE ENERGIES Factsanddetails.com/China ; WATER IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China

Effects of Water Pollution in China

Deformities in fish such as one or no eyes and misshapen skeletons and a decreasing numbers of rare wild Chinese sturgeon in the Yangtze has been blamed on a paint chemical widely used in Chinese industry.

China is the largest polluter of the Pacific Ocean. Offshore dead zones---oxygen-starved areas in the sea that are virtually devoid off life---are not only found in shallow water but also in deep water. They are mainly created by agricultural run-off---namely fertilizer---and reach their peak in the summer. In the spring freshwater creates a barrier layer, cutting off the salt water below from the oxygen in the air. Warm water and fertilizers cause algae blooms. Dead algae sinks to the bottom and is decomposed by bacteria, depleting oxygen in deep water.

Water pollution---caused primarily by industrial waste, chemical fertilizers and raw sewage--- accounts for half of the $69 billion that the Chinese economy loses to pollution every year. About 11.7 million pounds of organic pollutants are emitted into Chinese waters very day, compared to 5.5 in the United States, 3.4 in Japan, 2.3 in Germany, 3.2 in India, and 0.6 in South Africa.

Water Pollution and Health and Protests

Nearly two thirds of China's rural population---more than 500 million people---use water contaminated by human and industrial waste. Accordingly it is not all that surprising that gastrointestinal cancer is now the number one killer in the countryside,

More than 130 residents of two villages in Guangxi Province in southern China were poisoned by arsenic-contaminated water. Arsenic showed up in their urine. The source is believed to be waste from a nearby metallurgy factory.

In August 2009, a thousand villagers gathered outside a government office in Zhentouu township in Hunan Province to protests a the presence of the Xiange Chemical factory, which villagers say has polluted water used to irrigate rice and vegetables and caused at least two deaths in the area.

Sources of Water Pollution

Major polluters include chemical factories, drug manufactures, fertilizer makers, tanneries, paper mills.

In October 2009, Greenpeace identified five industrial facilities in southern China's Pearl River delta that were dumping poisonous metals and chemicals'such as beryllium, manganese, nonylphenol and tetrabromobisphenol--- into water used by local residents for drinking. The group found the toxins in pipes that led from the facilities.

In February 2008 the Fuan textile factory, a multimillion dollar operation in Guangdong Province that produces enormous quantities of T-shirts and other clothes for export, was shut down for dumping waste from dyes into the Maozhou River and turning the water red. It turned out the factory produced 47,000 tons of waste a day and could only process 20,000 tons with the rest being dumped into the river. It latter quietly reopened in a new location.

Polluted Chinese Rivers and Lakes

According to one government survey, 436 of China's 532 rivers are polluted, with more than half of them too polluted to serve as sources of drinking water, and 13 of 15 sectors of China's seven largest rivers are seriously polluted. The most polluted rivers are in the east and south around the major population centers with the pollution getting worse the further downstream one goes. In some cases each city along a river dumps pollutants outside their city limits, creating increasingly more pollution for the cities down stream. Chinese environmentalist Ma Jun said, "What's not receiving attention is the destruction of the river ecosystem, which I think will have long-tern effects on our water resources."

Many rivers are filled with garbage, heavy metals and factory chemicals. Suzhou Creek in Shanghai stinks of human waste and effluence from pig farms. There have been devastating fish kills caused by the release of chemicals into the Haozhongou River in Anhui province and Min Jiang River in Sichuan Province.

The Huai flows through densely populated farmland between the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers. Bottlenecks and elevation changes make the river both prone to flooding and collecting pollutants. Half the checkpoints along the Huai River in central and eastern China revealed pollution levels of "Grade 5" or worse, with pollutants detected in ground water 300 meters below the river.

The Huai river in Anhui province is so polluted all the fish have died and people have to drink bottled water to avoid getting sick. Some places have water that is too toxic to touch and leaves behind scum when it is boiled. Here, crops have been destroyed by irrigation water from the river; fish farms have been wiped out; and fishermen have lost their livelihoods. The South-North Water Transfer Project---which will travel through the Huai basin---is likely to deliver water that is dangerously polluted.

The Qingshui River, a tributary of the Huai whose names means "clear water," has turned black with trails of yellow foam from pollution from small mines that have opened up to meet the demand for magnesium, molybdenum and vanadium used in the booming steel industry. River samples indicate unhealthy levels of magnesium and chromium. The vanadium refineries foul the water and produce smokes that deposits a yellowing powder on teh countryside.

The Liao River is also a mess. Gains made with new water treatment facilities have been canceled out by higher than ever levels of industrial pollution.

In May 2007, 11 companies along the Songhua River, including local food companies, were ordered to shut down because of the heavily-polluted water they dumped into the river. A survey found that 80 percent exceeded pollution discharge limits. One company turned off pollution control devices and dumped sewage directly into the river.

In March 2008 contamination of the Dongjing River with ammonia, nitrogen and metal-cleaning chemicals turned the water red and foamy and forced authorities to cut water supplies for at least 200,000 people in Hubei Province in central China.

Polluted Groundwater in China

About 40 percent of China's agricultural land is irrigated with underground water, of which 90 percent is polluted, according to Liu Xin, a food and health expert and a member of an advisory body to parliament, told the Southern Metropolitan Daily.

In February 2013, Xu Chi wrote in the Shanghai Daily, "Shallow underground water in China has been severely polluted and the situation is deteriorating rapidly, with water quality data in 2011 showing that 55 percent of underground supplies in 200 cities was of bad or extremely bad quality, according to the Ministry of Land and Resources. A review of underground water carried out by the ministry from 2000 to 2002 showed that nearly 60 percent of shallow underground water was undrinkable, the Beijing News reported yesterday. Some reports in the Chinese media said water pollution was so severe in some regions that it caused cancer in villagers and even led to cows and sheep which drank it to become sterile. [Source: Xu Chi, Shanghai Daily, February 25, 2013]

Jonathan Kaiman wrote in The Guardian, "A recent government study found that groundwater in 90 percent of China's cities is contaminated, most of it severely. Chinese media responded with surprising urgency - the Straits Times newspaper in southeastern Fujian province presented the findings in a full front-page spread."Groundwater is a key source of drinking water, industrial and agricultural use, especially in northern China," said Ma. "If this resource gets contaminated, it's far more difficult to restore than surface water or the air." [Source: Jonathan Kaiman, The Guardian, February 21, 2013 <=>]

Chemical companies in east China's Weifang City were accused of using high-pressure injection wells to discharge waste sewage more than 1,000 meters underground for years, seriously polluting underground water and posing a cancer threat. Kaiman wrote: "Ground zero for the recent flurry of online outrage is Weifang, a city of 8 million in coastal Shandong province. Weifang's internet users have accused local paper mills and chemical plants of directly pumping industrial waste into the city's water supply 1,000 meters underground, causing cancer rates in the area to skyrocket. "I was just angry after receiving information from Web users saying that the groundwater in Shandong had been polluted and I forwarded it online," Deng Fei, a reporter whose microblog posts sparked the allegations, told the state-run Global Times. "But it came as a surprise to me that after I sent out these posts, many people from different places in northern and eastern China all complained that their hometowns have been similarly polluted." <=>

Weifang officials have offered a reward of about £10,000 to anyone who can provide evidence of illegal wastewater dumping. According to a Weifang Communist party committee spokesperson, local authorities have investigated 715 companies and have yet to find any evidence of wrongdoing. <=>

In September 2013, Xinhua reported on a village in Henan where the groundwater has been badly polluted. The news agency said that locals claimed the deaths of 48 villagers from cancer are linked to the pollution. Research carried out by Yang Gonghuan, a professor of public health at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences has also linked high rates of cancer to polluted river water in Henan, Anhui and Shangdong provinces. [Source: Jennifer Duggan, The Guardian, October 23, 2013]

Cancer Villages and Polluted Waterways in China

According to the World Bank, 60,000 people die each year from diarrhea, bladder and stomach cancer and other diseases directly caused by water-borne pollution. A study by the WHO came with a much higher figure.

Cancer village is a term used to describe villages or towns where cancer rates have risen dramatically because of pollution. There are said to be around 100 cancer villages along the Huai River and its tributaries in Henan Province, especially on the Shaying River. Death rates on Huai River are 30 percent higher than the national average. In 1995, the government declared that water from a Huai tributary was undrinkable and the water supply for 1 million people was cut off. The military had to truck in water for a month until 1,111 paper mills and 413 other industrial plants on the river were shut down.

In the village of Huangmengying---where a once-clear stream is now greenish black from factory wastes---cancer accounted for 11 of the 17 deaths in 2003. Both the river and well water in the village---the main source of drinking water---have an acrid smell and taste produced by pollutants dumped upstream by tanneries, paper mills, a huge MSG plant, and other factories. Cancer had been rare when the stream was clear.

Tuanjieku is town six kilometers northwest of Xian that still uses an ancient system of moats to irrigate its crops. The moats unfortunately don't drain so well and are now badly contaminated by household discharges and industrial waste. Visitors to the town are often overwhelmed by the rotten egg smell and feel faint after five minutes of breathing in the air. Vegetables produced in the fields are discolored and sometimes black. Residents suffer from abnormally high cancer rates.

One third of peasants in the village Badbui are mentally ill or seriously ill. Women report high numbers of miscarriages and many people die in middle age. The culprit is believed to be drinking water drawn from the Yellow River downstream from a fertilizer plant.

The waters around Taizhou in Zhejiang, the home of Hisun Pharmaceutical, one of China's largest drug makers, are so contaminated with sludge and chemicals that fishermen complain their hands and legs become ulcerated, and in extreme cases need amputation. Studies have show that people who live around the city have high cancer and birth defect rates.

Yangtze pollution

Polluted Yangtze, Pearl and Yellow Rivers

China's three great rivers---the Yangtze, Pearl and Yellow River---are so filthy that it is dangerous to swim or eat fish caught in them. Parts of the Pearl River in Guangzhou are so thick, dark and soupy it looks like one could walk across it. Industrial toxins were blamed for turning the Yangtze an alarming shade of red in 2012.

In recent years pollution has become a problem on the Yellow River. By one count 4,000 of China's 20,000 petrochemical factories are on the Yellow River and a third of all fish species found in the Yellow River have become extinct because of dams, falling water levels, pollution and over fishing.

More than 80 percent of the Hai-Huaih Yellow river basin is chronically polluted. In October 2006, a one kilometer section of the Yellow River turned red in the city of Lanzhou in Gansu Province as result of a "red and smelly" discharge from a sewage pipe. In December 2005, six tons of diesel oil leaked into a tributary of the Yellow River from a pipe that cracked because of freezing conditions. It produced a 40 mile long slick. Sixty-three water pumps had to be shut down, including some in Jinan, the capital of Shandong Province.

The Yangtze River is polluted with 40 million tons of industrial and sewage waste. Half of China's 20,000 petrochemical factories lie on its banks. About 40 percent of all waste water produced in China---about 25 billion tons---flows into the Yangtze, of which only about 20 percent is treated beforehand.

The pollution has taken its toll on aquatic life. Fish catches from the river declined from 427,000 tons in the 1950s to 100,000 tons in the 1990s. The Yangtze is in danger of becoming a "dead river" unable to sustain marine life or providing drinking water. According to report by the Chinese Academy of Sciences released in April 2007 the Yangtze is seriously and largely irreversibly polluted. More than 600 kilometers of its length and almost 30 percent of its major tributaries are in critical condition.

Sections of the Grand Canal that have water deep enough to accommodate boats are often filled with trash sewage and oil slicks. Chemical waste and fertilizer and pesticide run-off empties into the canal. The water is mostly brownish green. People who drink it often get diarrhea and break out in rashes.

Polluted Lakes, Canals and Coastal Areas in China

Some lakes are in equally bad shape. China's great lakes---the Tai, Chao and Dianchi---have water that is rated Grade V, the most degraded level. It is unfit for drinking or for agricultural or industrial use.

Describing China's fifth-biggest lake a Wall Street Journal reporter wrote: "The slow, hot days of summer are here, and sun-fed algae is starting to clot the milky surface of Chao Lake. Soon a living scum will carpet a patch the size of New York City. It will quickly blacken and rot...The smell is so terrible you can not describe it."

Canals, See Changzhou, Places

Apple Accused of Making a River Runs Black

In many cases factories fouling critical water sources are making goods consumed by people in the U.S. and Europe. Problems created by China's water pollution are not just confined to China either. Water pollution and garbage produced in China floats down its rivers to the sea and is carried by prevailing winds and currents to Japan and South Korea.

In March 2012, Peter Smith wrote in The Times, Beyond the brick cottages of Tongxin runs Lou Xia Bang, once the soul of the farming village and a river where, until the digital revolution, children swam and mothers washed rice. Today it flows black: a chemical mess heavy with the stench of China's high-tech industry---the hidden companion of the world's most famous electronics brands and a reason the world gets its gadgets on the cheap. [Source: Peter Smith, The Times, March 9, 2012]

The article then goes on to describe how the town of Tongxin was being affected by chemical waste from local factories that, as well as turning the river black, has caused a "phenomenal" increase in cancer rates in Tongxin (according to research by five Chinese non-governmental organisations). The factories have grown up in the last few years and make circuit boards, touch screens and the casings of smartphones, laptops and tablet computers. As usual in these cases, Apple was mentioned---although the evidence appears to be a little sketchy as to whether these factories are actually players in the Apple supply chain. [Source: Spendmatter UK/Europe blog]

Smith wrote in the Times: "Workers at the Kaedar factory, five metres from a kindergarten where children have complained of dizziness and nausea, have secretly confirmed that products had left the factory bearing the Apple trademark."

Red Tides, Salt Tides and Algae Bloom in China

Algae blooms, or eutrophication, in lakes are caused by too much nutrients in the water. They turn lakes green and suffocate fish by depleting the oxygen. They are often caused by human and animal waste and run off of chemical fertilizers. Similar conditions create red tides in the sea.

The government estimates that $240 million worth of damage and economic loses was caused by 45 major red tides between 1997 and 1999. Describing a red tide near the town of Aotoum that left the seas blanketed with dead fish and fishermen badly in debt, a fisherman told the Los Angeles Times, "The sea turned dark, like tea. If you talk to the fishermen around here, they'll all break into tears."

In some places the Chinese have tried to minimize the damage caused by algae blooms by pumping oxygen into the water and containing the blooms by adding clay which acts as a magnet for algae. A lack funds keeps China from tackling the problem using more conventional means.

A severe drought in 2006, caused large amounts of seawater to flow upstream on the Xinjiang River in southern China. In Macau salinity levels in the river jumped to almost three time above the World Health Organization standards. To combat the problem water was diverted into it from the Beijiang River in Guangdong.

Algae bloom in a Yunnan lake

Water Bodies Struck by Algae Blooms in China

Red tides have increased in their numbers and severity in coastal areas of China, particularly in Bohai Bay off eastern China, the East China Sea and the South China Sea. Large red tides have occurred around the Zhoushan Islands near Shanghai.

In May and June 2004, two huge red tides, covering a total area size of 1.3 million soccer fields, developed in Bohai Bay. One occurred near the mouth of the Yellow River and affected an area of 1,850 square kilometers. Another struck near the port city of Tianjin and covered nearly 3,200 square kilometers. It was blamed on the dumping of large amounts of waste water and sewage into the bay and rivers leading into the bay.

In June 2007, coastal waters off the booming industrial town of Shenzhen were hit by one the biggest ever red tides. It produced a 50 square kilometer slick and was caused by pollution and persisted because of a lack of rain.

There were large algae blooms in freshwater lakes throughout China in 2007. Some were blamed on pollution. Others were blamed on drought. In Jiangsu Province the water level in one lake dropped to its lowest level in 50 years and became inundated with blue-green algae that produced smelly, undrinkable water.

Huge Algae Bloom Strikes the Coastal Chinese City of Qingdao

China's coastal waters are suffering "acute" pollution, with the size of the worst affected areas soaring by more than 50 percent last year, an official body said. The state oceanic administration (SOA) said 68,000 square kilometers (26,300 square miles) of sea had the worst official pollution rating in 2012, up 24,000 square kilometers on 2011. [Source: Economic Times, (March 21, 2013)

Andrew Jacobs wrote in the New York Times, "In what has become an annual summer scourge, the coastal Chinese city of Qingdao has been hit by a near-record algae bloom that has left its popular beaches fouled with a green, stringy muck. The State Oceanic Administration said an area larger than the state of Connecticut had been affected by the mat of "sea lettuce," as it is known in Chinese, which is generally harmless to humans but chokes off marine life and invariably chases away tourists as it begins to rot. [Source: Andrew Jacobs, New York Times, July 5, 2013 |~|]

"Some beachgoers appeared to be amused by the outbreak, at least according to the Chinese media, which in recent days has featured startling images of swimmers lounging on bright green beds of algae, tossing it around with glee or piling it atop of one another as if it were sand. Local officials, however, are less enthused. They declared a "large-scale algae disaster," dispatching hundreds of boats and bulldozers to clean up the waters off Qingdao. With a few days workers and volunteers had cleared about 19,800 tons of the algae, according to the Qingdao government. While valued for its nutrition - or as an ingredient in fertilizers and biomass energy production - algae in large quantities can prove dangerous as it decomposes, producing toxic hydrogen sulfide gas. It also smells like rotten eggs. |~|

"The green tide, spread over 7,500 square miles is thought to be twice the size of an outbreak in 2008 that threatened sailing events during the Beijing Olympics, which took place around Qingdao. At the time, officials deployed boats, helicopters and 10,000 workers to keep the waters clear for the competition. The cleanup costs were later estimated at more than $30 million. Abalone, clam and sea cucumber farms suffered more than $100 million in damage, according to a 2011 study by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences. An outbreak in 2009 was even bigger, affecting a stretch of the Yellow Sea nearly as large as West Virginia. |~|

Causes of Huge Algae Bloom Off of Qingdao

Andrew Jacobs wrote in the New York Times, "Although biologists are at a loss to explain the most recent algae bloom, scientists suspect it is connected to pollution and increased seaweed farming in the province just south of Shandong. While similar green tides have been reported around the world, the annual bloom in the Yellow Sea is considered the largest, growing to an estimated million tons of biomass each year. [Source: Andrew Jacobs, New York Times, July 5, 2013 |~|]

The green tides were first reported in Qingdao in 2007. A key factor is the high supply of nutrients from agricultural runoff and wastewater. But those pollutants have been in the Yellow Sea for decades, leading scientists to look for new triggers. A group of researchers believe that the algae that washes up around Qingdao originates farther south in seaweed farms along the coast of Jiangsu Province. The farms grow porphyra, known as nori in Japanese cuisine, on large rafts in coastal waters. The rafts attract a kind of algae called ulva prolifera, and when the farmers clean them off each spring they spread the fast-growing algae out into the Yellow Sea, where it finds nutrients and warm temperatures ideal for blooming. |~|

"It feeds off those nutrients and grows bigger and bigger and eventually you can see it from satellites," said John Keesing, a scientist at the CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research in Australia who is studying the green tide with Chinese researchers. "The currents gently move the algae in a northeastern direction out into the center of the Yellow Sea. You get a huge amount, and eventually it starts to wash on shore." |~|

"While farmers have long grown seaweed along the Jiangsu coast for consumption, the rafts expanded much farther offshore starting in 2006, which may have contributed to the recent blooms, according to an article published last May by Mr. Keesing and his colleagues. The answer to curtailing the blooms may lie in disposing of the algae that clogs the nori rafts on land. "We haven't suggested people stop growing porphyra, but proper husbandry methods to prevent much of the waste algae from going into sea, that's probably the only preventive measure that could be deployed," he said.

Lake Tai Pollution

Lake Tai is often choked with industrial waste from factories producing paper, film and dyes, urban sewage and agricultural run-off. It sometimes is covered with green algae as a result of nitrogen and phosphate pollution. Locals complain of polluted irrigation water that causes their skin to peal, dyes that turn the water red and fumes that sting their eyes.

Dams built for flood control and irrigation have prevented Lake Tai's from flushing out pesticides and fertilizers that flow into it. Particularly damaging are phosphates which suck out life-sustaining oxygen. Starting in the 1980s a number of chemical factories were built on its shores. As of the late 1990s there were 2,800 chemical factories around the lake, some of which released their waste directly into the lake in the middle of the night to avoid detection.

Lake Tai Algae Blooms

Reporting from Zhoutie, near Lake Tai, William Wan wrote in Washington Post, "You smell the lake before you see it, an overwhelming stench like rotten eggs mixed with manure. The visuals are just as bad, the shore caked with toxic blue-green algae. Farther out, where the algae is more diluted but equally fueled by pollution, it swirls with the currents, a vast network of green tendrils across the surface of Tai Lake." [Source: William Wan, Washington Post, October 29, 2010]

"Such pollution problems are now widespread in China after three decades of unbridled economic growth. But what's surprising about Tai Lake is the money and attention that's been spent on the problem and how little either has accomplished. Some of the country's highest-ranking leaders, including Premier Wen Jiabao, have declared it a national priority. Millions of dollars have been poured into the cleanup. And yet, the lake is still a mess. The water remains undrinkable, the fish nearly gone, the fetid smell lingering over villages." [Ibid]

"At Tai Lake, part of the problem is that the same industrial factories poisoning the water also transformed the region into an economic powerhouse. Shutting them down, local leaders say, would destroy the economy overnight. In fact, many of the factories shut down during the 2007 scandal have since reopened under different names, environmentalists say." [Ibid]

"Tai Lake is the embodiment of China's losing fight against pollution. This summer, the government said that, despite stricter rules, pollution is rising again across the country in key categories such as emissions of sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain. Just months before, the government had revealed that water pollution was more than twice as severe as previous official figures had shown." [Ibid]

The algae bloom on Lake Tai was caused by toxic cyanobacteria, commonly called pond scum. It turned much of the lake florescent green and produced a terrible stench that could be smelled miles away from the lake. The Lake Tai bloom became a symbol of China's lack of environmental regulations. Afterwards a high-level meeting on the lake's future was convened, with Beijing closing down hundreds of chemical factories and promising to spend $14.4 billion to clean up the lake.

Lake Tai Activist

Wu Lihong, a peasant who worked for a while as a salesman, had been trying to draw attention to the condition of Lake Tai for more than a decade. William Wan wrote in Washington Post, "The story of Tai Lake is a story of high-level promises and lower-level reneging, of economic interests superceding environmental ones. And it is an illustration of China's awkward relationship with environmental activists, who challenge the government's authority but are often the loudest force pushing its new environmental priorities on the local level.No one knows this story better than Wu Lihong. For almost two decades, Wu - a peasant living along the lake,- waged a one-man campaign to clean it up. He kept track of the thousands of factories springing up along its shores and took pictures of the untreated waste they discharged into the lake. He mailed water samples to inspectors, called TV stations and spoke out in the face of threats from factory bosses and local leaders. [Source: William Wan, Washington Post, October 29, 2010]

"His actions cost him his job, threatened his marriage and landed him in prison for three years. He returned home this spring to find the lake virtually unchanged. Now, with no job prospects and few friends willing to risk a visit, he spends much of his time alone at home, mulling over what he has sacrificed - whether it was worth it, and whether he should continue." [Ibid]

"To hear Wu's story firsthand is to witness the paranoia he now lives in. A short, baby-faced man, Wu, 42, assumes his cellphone is tapped and prefers meeting strangers in obscure spots outside town. After agreeing to take a reporter to his home, Wu pulls up his shorts to reveal a two-inch scar on his inner thigh. He said he got it a few weeks ago by the lake when two thugs attacked him with a knife. He points to rounder scars along his arm and his hands - cigarette burns, he said, from police interrogations." [Ibid]

"At first, there were other villagers reporting the pollution, too," said Han Yaobing, 60, who was one of them. "But everyone gave up under the pressure of authorities. He was the only one left." After Chinese and foreign media picked up his story, Wu became a national hero and by 2005 was being praised by Chinese and international organizations. That year, China's highest-ranking legislative body, the National People's Congress, declared him one of China's top 10 environmental activists and flew him to a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing."

Lake Tai Activist Harassed, Arrested and Imprisoned

Around the time of the algae bloom Wu Lihong was sentenced to three years in jail on trumped charges. At the time of his arrest he was preparing to go to Beijing with photographs and other documentation of dumping by chemical factories in the lake. Wu had been particularly outraged by the designation of Yixing, the home of many chemical factories, as a "Model City for Environmental Protection." Wu's conviction was based on a confession that Wu said was coerced with torture and five straight days of sleep deprivation.

William Wan wrote in Washington Post, "All that changed in 2007, when - just two years after Beijing lauded him for his work trying to protect the lake - Wu learned that the central government planned to award his city the title of "National Model City for Environmental Protection," praising the very local officials Wu had fought for years. Wu was furious. He started gathering more evidence, telling friends he planned to sue the central government over the title. Within weeks, he was arrested." [Source: William Wan, Washington Post, October 29, 2010]

"The exact charges changed several times, and most were ultimately dropped. In the end, Wu's conviction on two charges of blackmail and fraud relied heavily on his confession, which Wu says he signed after being hung by the arms for five days and beaten with branches. While he was in prison, authorities put his wife and daughter under 24-hour surveillance. Shortly before Wu's release, the guards in front of his house were replaced by three traffic cameras erected on the single-lane road leading to his farmhouse." [Ibid]

In the face of this bleak future, Wu now questions whether he sacrificed everything for nothing. "Maybe I should have just focused on making a living, raising my family," he says in his living room, holding his wife's string of carved monkeys. "But this is where I live. A man cannot just run away to Shangri-La while his home is ruined." Across the room, Wu's wife says little. Because Wu can't find a job, she now works two - one at a wool factory and the second, ironically, at a chemical plant on Tai Lake." [Ibid]

"Improvements" at Tai Lake

As Tai Lake became a national scandal, hundreds of industrial plants were shut down, local officials were dismissed, and billions of dollars were committed to clean it up. It became part of the new nationwide push to tackle air quality, forest preservation and water pollution. Beijing has earmarked $16 billion to clean up Lake Tai. William Wan wrote in Washington Post, "Progress since then, however, has proved elusive. By some standards, the lake has improved. The level of nitrogen and phosphorus - ingredients for algae growth - have decreased slightly. By others measures, such as overall water quality, the lake has gotten worse. According to government statistics in July, 85 percent of the lake was put in the worst possible category for water quality, unsuitable for drinking, irrigation or even recreation." [Source: William Wan, Washington Post, October 29, 2010]

"Meanwhile, plant executives argue they have already done their part by installing new discharge treatment machines. But water quality experts jokingly call the new equipment "on/off machines," because they say the machines are only turned on during inspections. But the worst sign of all is the fact that almost every city on the lake has quietly begun finding other sources of drinking water. The projects, which are costly but seldom publicized, indicate that even as local authorities devote billions to repairing the lake, few believe it will recover." "The fear is that once these cities no longer depend on the lake for drinking water, the urgency will disappear," said Ma Jun, director of the non-governmental Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. [Ibid]

Efforts to Combat Water Pollution in China

In August 2006, the Chinese government admitted that China has serious water pollution and drinking water problems and earmarked $132 billion for cleaning up and improving China's water supply. Allocations included $30 billion for urban water supply projects and $50 million in wastewater projects. Projects include sewages works, pipes, desalination plants and the South-North Water Diversion Program. Environmentalists estimate that for China to truly address it water problems it needs to spend $300 billion alone on antipollution equipment.

Chinas want to reduce water pollution discharges by 10 percent between 2008 and 2010. More than $8 billion was spent on cleaning up the Huai River basin in Henan and Anhui Province in the 1980s and 1990s. Great progress was made. In the mid 1990s the clean up was heralded as a great success and much of the work stopped. By the mid 2000s the river was polluted again, in many cases worse than it was before.

Laws on the books are widely ignored. There is little transparency. Money earmarked for waste water projects is sometime re-appropriated to build power plants. Local officials have close relationships with business owners that own the factories and mines that cause the pollution.

In some cases the local governments that are supposed to do something about pollution are the same ones that own the factories that do the polluting. That is the case with huge MSG factory In Xiangcheng in Henan Province which employs 8,000 people and produces toxins like ammonia nitrate. One official who spoke anonymously to the New York Times said of the government in Xiangcheng: "There are a lot of officials who don't care about pollution. Some leaders are just interested in making money."

Sometimes there are protests. In July 2007, police clashed with thousands of people in Yuanshi, a town in Sichuan Province, angry over pollution of local water supplies by a brewery. Seven villager were detained and 20 were injured. The protest began after the brewery dumped waste water which contaminated drinking and irrigation water.

Private Companies Battle Water Pollution in China

Many Chinese cities have outsourced their water treatment to large private companies. The French company Veolia alone manages water systems in 17 Chinese cities, including Changzhou, Lizhou and Shanghai. The water situation in these cities has been dramatically improved but residents now have to pay a significant amount of money for water that in the past was free or nearly free. [Source: Vanity Fair]

In Shanghai, where Veolia has a $243 million, $50-year contract, the French company has laid 900 miles of large diameter pipes, hooked up 300,000 new structures to the water system, built sewage and water treatment plants and hired 7,000 local people between 2002 and 2006. To pay for all those Veolia is gradually raising water prices.

Some pensioners in Lizhou pay a quarter of their $40 a month pensions for water. When asked about conserving water, one pensioner said he lived an building, with 70 or so apartments and his water bill was determined by dividing the total bill for the apartment among its residents, meaning that one person's effort to conserve water would bring few rewards if others wasted water.

Long Cun is a large village on the Liu River in Guanxi Province that is down river from a paper mill that dumped so much pollutants into the water the river became "as black as soy sauce.." Villagers complained and have been given piped water from the city of Lizhou. The only problem is that the residents of the town have to pay four dollars a month for their water, a considerable sum for people that only earn $20 to $30 a month.

Chinese Water Pollution Worsens Despite Efforts to Curb It

In July 2010, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, told the China Daily, the number of accidents fouling the air and water doubled during the first half of 2010, with an average of 10 each month. The report also found that more than a quarter of the country rivers, lakes and streams were too contaminated to be used for drinking water. Acid rain, it added, has become a problem in nearly 200 of the 440 cities it monitored. [Source: Andrew Jacobs, New York Times, July 28, 2010]

Water treatment facilities built by the national government are sometimes left idle by their local operators because of the high cost of operating them. Chinese environmentalist Ma Jun told the Washington Post, "Hundreds of sewage plants have been built around China, but we haven't seen our water getting cleaner. We have more than 600 records of violations by sewage plants discharging above standards or simply not treating it at all or properly disposing of the sludge."

Chinese Environment Official Challenged to Swim in River

In February 2013, Jonathan Kaiman wrote in The Guardian, "an eyeglass-retailer executive from Rui'an City, coastal Zhejiang province, offered the city's environmental protection chief Bao Zhenming more than £20,000 to take a 20-minute dip in a highly polluted local river. The entrepreneur, Jin Zengmin, posted the dare to his microblog beneath pictures showing the waterway overflowing with discarded aluminum cans, polystyrene boxes and paper lanterns. He blamed the river's industrial demise on dumping by a local rubber shoe factory. The Rui'an government responded by saying that most of the river's pollution was caused by individuals, not factories, and could be attributed to overpopulation. Bao has since declined the offer. [Source: Jonathan Kaiman, The Guardian, February 21, 2013]

The challenge to Bao came as the government announced on Thursday that it will force heavily polluting industries to participate in a compulsory insurance programme to ensure they can adequately provide compensation for damage. The mining and smelting industries must participate in the scheme, along with lead battery manufacturers, leather goods firms and chemical factories. Petrochemical companies and firms that make hazardous chemicals and hazardous waste would also be encouraged to participate.

Reuters reported: "Chen Yuqian, 60, a farmer from the town of Pailian in eastern Zhejiang province, said he has been beaten up five times in his decade-long fight against soil and water pollution --beatings for which he blames local officials. On February 20, Chen issued a challenge on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, daring officials from the local environment protection bureau to swim in a stretch of polluted river. He offered 300,000 yuan ($48,200) as a reward. [Source: Sui-Lee Wee and Adam Jourdan, Reuters, March 10, 2013]

"Four days later, dozens of men, carrying sticks and rocks, charged into his home and started smashing things, Chen said. "They are trying to scare me so that I don't petition anymore, so that I don't report on the pollution anymore," Chen said. Xu Shuifa, the Communist Party secretary of the district that governs Chen's village, told Reuters by telephone that he had no links to the attackers and said the attack was linked to a land dispute Chen has with three of his neighbors. Back in Beijing, Dong, the attorney, said he had filed an appeal with the environment ministry for the soil survey data and expected a decision within two months. He said he would go to court if he was denied. ////

Image Sources: 1) Northeast Blog; 2) Gary Braasch; 3) ESWN, Environmental News; 4, 5) China Daily, Environmental News ; 6) NASA; 7, 8) Xinhua, Environmental News ; YouTube

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton's Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

&copy 2008 Jeffrey Hays

Last updated April 2014

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Agriculture's unsavory side-effects also plague the Mississippi River Valley. Colin Wellenkamp, the executive director of the Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative, said that communities in Arkansas down to the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico face the most serious nitrate issues, due to bioaccumulation of the nutrients in their water source. (While most nutrient pollution is released farther north, contaminants tend to travel south, where they accumulate and sit near the mouth of the Gulf.) Often, water-treatment facilities are too old to adequately filter out the chemicals. "Some of my cities are facing serious infrastructure issues because that stuff's been neglected for so long," Wellenkamp said.

NOAA.gov

The West Coast isn't spared, either. "In some parts of California, like the Central Valley, you see both a combination of water-scarcity and water-quality problems, because of over-pumping or because of drought," Olson said. "They often, unfortunately, go hand in hand, so even if you have water, it's not fit to drink."

Farther south, colonias-which are unincorporated settlements near the Mexican border - in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico also frequently lack running water or sewer access. According to the Rural Community Assistance Partnership, approximately 30 percent of residents in colonias didn't have safe drinking water in 2015. Mary Gonzales, a Texas state representative, said the problem is compounded by inadequate wastewater infrastructure for the 253 colonias in her district. "If you can't flush your toilet and the septic system isn't an adequate one, the raw sewage comes out onto the street," she explained . "That's literally what happens." She added that current immigration rhetoric has complicated efforts to develop colonias, even though most of these communities are decades old and most residents are citizens.

Fixing rural water problems can be a costly prospect, but finding the money is often more a matter of political will. In Texas, one colonia needs $32 million to build basic wastewater infrastructure, which Gonzalez says is not an insurmountable sum. Nevertheless, help has not been forthcoming. In 2017, Texas Governor Greg Abbott used the line-item veto to defund the state's Colonia Initiatives Program. The state legislature also failed to renew the Economically Distressed Areas Program, which provided funding for infrastructure development. Gonzalez introduced a House Joint Resolution that would have created a constitutional amendment to fund the program through joint-obligation bonds. The bill failed.

"When I'm advocating funding for colonias, sometimes people don't even know there are thousands of communities who don't even have running water," Gonzales added. "These communities have been invisible for a long time." Colonias have long been subject to environmental injustice, but the rest of rural America's water problems are largely invisible, too- not least to the government bodies responsible for solving them.

A few months after President Donald Trump's inauguration, Kentuckians from Martin County were dealing with contamination-but, they told NPR, they were hopeful for new federal spending that could help rebuild their water systems and their trust in government . Their hopes are echoed in other suffering communities. Many of the contamination problems facing rural America can be traced to old, broken, unreliable infrastructure like leaky pipes, clunky filtration systems, and backed-up sewers. Trump, of course, has promised to fix America's aging infrastructure: His plan is set to be released Monday.

If Trump really wants to help rural America, he'd have to confront two facts. The first is that white, blue-collar workers aren't the only rural Americans who need assistance. Immigrant and Latino communities are also at the front lines of this crisis. The second is that rural water travails can't be solved without public funding: new public funding. "If you're going to put out a $200 billion infrastructure plan, and the $200 billion is coming from cuts or elimination of other domestic programs we depend on, it's not going to help anybody," Wellenkamp said.

Wellenkamp fears that Trump will choose to zero out community-development block grants, or water-pollution-control grant programs, in order to fund his bill. That fear makes sense: In 2017, Trump introduced a budget proposal that would entirely defund the USDA's water and wastewater loan and grant program. Though his administration later rescinded that proposal, it indicated an apparent lack of interest in or familiarity with the program's work.

And though Trump's much-vaunted infrastructure proposal will reportedly set aside $50 billion for rural development, a leaked draft of the forthcoming plan makes clear that it may be nothing more than a boon for backers of privatization. "The Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) will be open for business for private firms to both manage and repair water infrastructure at taxpayer's expense," Michelle Chen recently explained at The Nation. "In addition, a credit scheme under the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act would provide more opportunity to private investors, by eliminating existing requirements that WIFIA funds be used for 'Community Water Systems.'" The private sector, with its success strictly tied to profit-making, should not be involved in utilities at all. But certainly when public water money doesn't even require those private water businesses to use it for, well, community water systems, then the chances those systems will improve is close to nil.

Saul Loeb/Getty

Perhaps unsurprisingly, The Washington Post has reported that the White House's business-friendly infrastructure policy is being guided by a group of outside investors led by one of Trump's billionaire friends, the developer Richard LeFrak. This is consistent with the Trump administration's other business-policy priorities, like the Department of Labor's proposed tip-pooling rule, which would allow restaurant owners to plunder their workers' tips because owners know best how to distribute that money: In other words, Trump's definition of economic progress is to grow the bank accounts of wealthy interests on the backs of everyday Americans and, yes, let it trickle down. Given that there isn't much profit in running water to sparsely populated, low-income areas-indeed, water boards in rural communities are already raising rates to try to make ends meet-it's unclear how blindly funding the private sector would incentivize the massive rebuilding projects these communities desperately need. Why give out tips or vast government checks when you can "reinvest" in yourself?

It's only too easy to doubt Trump's commitment to clean water. In addition to the above, the administration is openly hostile to the EPA, a stance that presents still more obstacles to drinkable water, and it at one point declared war on the USDA's water-infrastructure funds, which advocates aren't convinced the administration has really abandoned . "It would not stun me if they tried to take another crack at cutting substantially or even eliminating that funding," Olson said. "It's kind of ironic that the administration that purportedly wants to protect rural citizens has proposed eliminating one of the most important programs that helps rural communities have safe water."

America's failure to provide basic necessities to its rural citizens punches significant holes in the exceptionalist narrative favored by the Trump administration. It's also a potentially life-threatening oversight. Rural Americans are already disproportionately more likely to die from cancer. Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention attribute the trend to a number of factors, including heavy tobacco use and obesity. But rural Americans also have to contend with inadequate public-health infrastructure: They're more likely to be uninsured, and rural hospitals and community health centers are closing at a steady clip. This leaves rural communities ill-equipped to cope with the consequences of drinking contaminated water-assuming they can access water at all.

Screenshot/eig.org

If water systems are not modernized soon, the changing climate will ensure yet more contamination, therefore increasing these disparities. A study published in the journal Science last year found that nutrient pollution flowing into the Mississippi River will likely increase as the climate changes, even if farmers don't increase the amount of fertilizer they're using. That's because global warming is expected to cause more extreme storms and intense precipitation in the Midwest and Great Lakes, including the upper Mississippi Atchafalaya River Basin. In other areas of the United States, climate change is expected to cause more intense droughts and therefore more water-supply challenges. Those places include the rural communities in California's Central Valley and south Texas.

Rural communities face a true nightmare scenario, and help isn't on the way. These sparsely populated and sometimes deeply isolated towns and counties are already gripping the threads of an unravelling social safety net. Though rural America is making some economic gains, it still drags behind urban centers, and the gap is only expected to widen under Trump. But future administrations could change this narrative if they have the political will. The solution is massive public investment in failing infrastructure. Not only would this resolve a serious public-health crisis, it would also create jobs: You can't fix rural America's water without workers. Those jobs could even be folded into a federal-jobs guarantee, providing families with income while ensuring them access to safe drinking water and wastewater systems. Finally, a universal expansion of U.S. health care would resolve the insufficiencies of a privatized system and allow rural people to seek treatment for the physical consequences of drinking dirty water.

Those solutions won't come from the Trump administration. In fact, individuals in both parties may balk at such a significant expansion of government. But it is the responsibility of government to protect the common good, and the state of rural water systems proves that this is a responsibility state and federal governments have refused to take up for far too long.

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Agriculture's unsavory side-effects also plague the Mississippi River Valley. Colin Wellenkamp, the executive director of the Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative, said that communities in Arkansas down to the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico face the most serious nitrate issues, due to bioaccumulation of the nutrients in their water source.

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The Application of Combined Sewage Treatment Technology in Rural Polluted Water Prevention and Control

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The Application of Combined Sewage Treatment Technology in Rural Polluted Water Prevention and Control

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New research in rural China may help improve drinking water quality and reduce air pollution

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New research in rural China may help improve drinking water quality and reduce air pollution

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For most of us, for our whole lives, we have turned on the faucet and cool, safe drinking water has flowed from the tap. This is a luxury that many in the world do not enjoy. According to the United Nations and World Health Organization, even though there has been great progress improving water quality and sanitation in the world, as many as 1.8 billion people still lack access to safe drinking water today. Every year ~500,000 people (mostly children) die from unsafe or insufficient drinking water.

Many people living in developing countries have no choice but to treat their drinking water on their own. They can use a variety of household water treatment technologies and methods, such as boiling, chlorination, filtration, and solar or ultraviolet light disinfection-and many are buying bottled water as well. Though most of these treatments work, they are time consuming or change the taste of the water, and in practice, relatively few households actually treat their drinking water on a regular basis.

Globally, boiling is still the most commonly used household water treatment (hereafter HWT) method. But boiling has its problems too. For one, after boiled water cools it can easily become contaminated again if, for example, a child places a dirty hand in the water, or if something falls into the water. Fuel is another issue. Because those without access to safe drinking water tend to be poorer households in rural areas, the fuels they use-such as wood, crop residues, or coal-produce air pollution that is almost as damaging to human health as cigarette smoke. Recent research by UC Berkeley professor Kirk Smith revealed that exposure to such household air pollution (HAP) is the largest single environmental health risk globally, and was responsible for an estimated 3.9 million deaths in 2010.

Over the last few decades, many programs have promoted different HWT technologies and many studies have examined their effectiveness in developing countries. But surprisingly little is known about HWT or the broader water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) field in China. Using an interdisciplinary blend of environmental science, public health and behavioral/social science research, ESPM Ph.D. student Alasdair Cohen has been working to change that.

The first paper from his dissertation research, recently published in the journal PLOS ONE, is the first known published study focused specifically on household water treatment in rural China.

A Gap in Knowledge
"Considering that approximately 600 million rural Chinese drink boiled water, and as many as 300 million don't have safe drinking water, it's really surprising how little we know about household water treatment there" says Cohen. A global census of HWT published a few years ago concluded that some 1.1 billion people in developing countries use HWT methods, but noted that their report didn't include data from China because they could not find any. According to Cohen, that's not all that surprising: water quality is a politically "sensitive" issue in China and there is little publicly available government data as a result. With available data from China included, though, the actual number of HWT users in developing countries is probably closer to 1.8 billion.

There are studies on water quality in China, but other researchers around the world rarely have the resources to translate them. Cohen is working to help bridge this language barrier. Through UC Berkeley's Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program, he has been working for two years with a number of Chinese-speaking undergraduate students to search for and summarize Chinese-language journal publications and government reports.

But it's not just a question of the language barrier. "There are at least 80 Chinese-language journal papers and some government reports focused specifically on water quality in rural areas of China," says Cohen, "but almost none of these publications report specific contaminant concentrations or risk classifications, which makes it challenging to try and understand the state of drinking water quality in rural China, or the impacts of various programs and policies." Cohen and the students are now working on preparing a "systematic review paper" to summarize the results from their work so that English-speaking academics in the WASH and HWT fields may better understand the research literature from China. He hopes the paper will be ready for publication in 2016.
New Research Collaborations
Before coming to Berkeley, Cohen lived in China for three years. He worked on a few United Nations projects there, including one with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), where he managed the creation of the Multidimensional Poverty Assessment Tool (MPAT), a monitoring and evaluation tool for rural poverty assessment that has since been used in a number of developing countries. It was also during these years in China that he learned to speak and read Chinese.

All this experience paid off when Cohen began exploring possibilities for his dissertation research. After working for some time to identify an appropriate research partner in China, a colleague from UNICEF introduced him to Tao Yong, the Director of China's National Center for Rural Water Supply Technical Guidance (NCRWSTG) at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC). The possibility of conducting research on HWT in China began to emerge.

Due to the sensitivity of water quality data in China as well as government reservations about collaborating with U.S. institutions, it took a while for Cohen to build a relationship with the NCRWSTG. After close to a year of discussion and planning, research began in the summer of 2013.

Cohen worked with the NCRWSTG to train CCDC staff in Guangxi Province. They collected data and drinking water samples from 450 households in different villages, including information about drinking water practices, preferences, fuel use, boiling behaviors, household ventilation, and much more. To determine if seasonal differences were an important factor, Cohen and the team returned for a second round of data collection during the 2013-2014 winter. To help understand the information people provided about their boiling behaviors, the research team also placed temperature sensors on kettles and pots in some of the households.

During this time, Cohen was even given clearance to gather his own water samples from the primary drinking water sources in the villages. He'd collect the samples and then take them back to his hotel room to analyze them with a portable water laboratory. Remembering this, a huge smile comes to his face:

"When I started my Ph.D. I had this vision of doing water quality research out in rural China," says Cohen, "and when I was taking those first water samples I had this amazing feeling that this was it! I was living the dream!"

Hurdles Along the Way

Living the dream didn't come without its struggles; a number of challenges had Cohen worried that the entire project might fall apart at times. In addition to the challenging year of building relationships and planning before research even began, the most trying time came when Cohen and his collaborators were preparing for the data collection. The plans for piloting and training were delayed and rescheduled a number of times. Adding to the stress were last-minute changes and directives from officials in Beijing and Guangxi.

"It was an incredibly stressful period; I was so anxious to get started but ended up spending months in Nanning [the capital of Guangxi Province] waiting," says Cohen. "There were so many delays, last-minute requests for additional documentation from Beijing, concerns from the county level CCDC offices, and even a false start with one of the trainings. Fortunately, the director [Tao Yong at the NCRWSTG] understood the value of the research and pushed things forward and in the end it all worked out."
Results: The Comparative Advantage of Electric Kettles
So what was the key to success? Was it persistence, hard work, relationship building, luck? Probably a bit of each. After they concluded the data collection in Guangxi, the NCRWSTG decided to replicate the research design and use it to understand these issues in a different province.

Before publishing any results, Cohen and NCRWSTG held a "ground truthing" meeting with CCDC staff in Guangxi Province to share the initial results and to gather their feedback. As described in his recent PLOS ONE article, Cohen's analyses showed that households using electric kettles had the safest drinking water as compared to households boiling their water in pots, or using bottled water, or not treating their water. And this was the case even after controlling for other variables that also influence water quality.

In addition to being the first HWT-focused study in China, Cohen's research was also the first study in his field to quantify the comparative advantage of boiling with electric kettles over pots and solid-fuels. Electric kettles, of course, don't create HAP. And because electric kettles have built-in lids that must be closed to boil water, the possibility of recontaminating the water after boiling is very small.

Based on Cohen's findings, the director of NCRWSTG wants to evaluate the potential benefits of a national electric kettle promotion program, in the hopes that it could be used to expand safe water access and reduce HAP exposure in poor areas of rural China.

"It's incredibly rewarding that our research results have such significant and hopefully beneficial implications. But I'm trying to not let myself think past the first stages of the research we'll need to do to determine if such a [national electric kettle promotion] program would be feasible - let alone justified. But yes, it's potentially really exciting!" says Cohen.
Continuing the Connections
The collaboration didn't stop in Guangxi: this fall, Cohen brought it all back to Berkeley when he worked with Isha Ray, co-director of the Berkeley Water Center, Jack Colford, a professor in the School of Public Health, and Mio Katayama Owens, director of CNR's International & Executive Programs, to invite the director of NCRWSTG and his colleagues to come to Berkeley. The resulting conference, " Water and Health in China and Beyond," brought UC Berkeley scholars and practitioners together to meet the CCDC delegates and to discuss research and developments related to water treatment, water management, disease prevention, and public health in China, California, and elsewhere. The two groups are now discussing avenues for creating a formal research collaboration to continue investigating the potential of electric kettles in China as well as other research projects.

Alasdair will earn his Ph.D. in Environmental Science, Policy and Management and an MPH in Epidemiology in the spring of 2016. After graduation, he hopes to continue working with the NCRWSTG, CCDC, and Berkeley faculty on applied environmental health research.

Read More:

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New research in rural China may help improve drinking water quality and reduce air pollution

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For most of us, for our whole lives, we have turned on the faucet and cool, safe drinking water has flowed from the tap. This is a luxury that many in the world do not enjoy.

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BWC/China-CDC Background | Berkeley Water Center

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While some chemical contamination occurs naturally (e.g., arsenic and fluoride), more often it is the result of pollution from industry, agriculture, energy production, and transportation - pollutants from these sources contaminate surface and groundwater, as well as soils, the air, and our oceans.

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Rural Drinking Water Solutions

Highlights
-783mn people in rural areas still lack safe drinking water; two dozen infectious diseases are the main reason why
-Rural water distribution systems like China's have upsides but also downsides; Point Of Use (POU) systems are best
-Ultrafiltration POU system has high efficiency & low cost; still need other solutions as POU systems aren't a fix all

WHO claimed that the world has met the Millennium Development Goal target of halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water in 2012, but there are still 783 million people living in rural areas lacking safe drinking water. ¹ This means that more than 783 million tonnes of safe drinking water is needed to be produced to solve this problem (assuming one person drinks 3 L of water every day).

In three countries, Bangladesh, Benin, and Cambodia (covered in a report by the World Bank), 46 million people lack access to clean water. The problem costs these countries 0.2-0.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) a year-at least US$275 million in total.

"... the main enemy against safe drinking-water is about two dozen infectious diseases predominantly caused by fecal microorganism contamination of the water source."

For those people, the main enemy against safe drinking-water is about two dozen infectious diseases predominantly caused by fecal microorganism contamination of the water source. ³ The minimum infectious doses for average healthy adults range from just a few organisms for Salmonella typhi (typhoid causing bacteria), to several hundred organisms for Shigella ﬂexneri (dysentery-causing bacteria), and to several million cells of Vibrio cholera (cholera-inducing cells). ⁴ These doses are signiﬁcantly lower for infants and small children than for the general adult population.

Moreover, there still exists a big question mark on the water qualities provided by existing wells with pumps, and how long those existing facilities could provide uncontaminated drinking water.

Chinas' solution is not suitable for all due to high costs & energy demands

A big step taken by the Chinese government is connecting every rural village with sophisticated water distribution systems. Despite the apparent advantages a water distribution system could bring, there are many downsides it might encounter. The high construction investment of a water distribution system, the great amount of energy required by the pumping process, and the high maintenance cost will limit the wide application of this approach around the world. Even if all those problems are solved, almost 40% of water brought to the household will be used for toilet flushing, which is a huge waste. Not to mention that a water distribution system with proper maintenance could have 10 to 20% leakage. ⁵ More importantly, it could bring secondary biological or chemical contamination if the distribution process is not well designed or monitored. ⁶

The high maintenance cost of China's water distribution system will limit its global application

Point of Use systems (POU) offer the best solve

In many other places, to consider building up a drinking water distribution system unless all the problems mentioned above (but not limited to) could be well tackled. In those places, chemical treatment like chlorination is not feasible since people cannot handle the process safely, while physical treatment like UV disinfection is not feasible either since no electricity is provided. Therefore, the very traditional way of a point of use (POU) system in treating water is boiling. But boiling becomes a less favored option since the process takes time and is limited by the availability or affordability of energy sources. ⁴ Besides, the high energy requirement and low energy efficiency in boiling water also contribute to global warming.

Point of Use systems are the best way to go but price can be an issue

Another practical option is filtration. A report written by TECHNEAU on "International Market Survey on Membrane-Based Products for Decentralized Water Supply" introduced three types of POU systems. ⁷

Ceramic POU systems: One of the manufacturers (names can be found in the original paper) provided POU systems with a good consistency in the produced water quality but an extremely high price of about 200 USD for a 4-member family living in low-income economies. The price is about 20% of their annual income.⁸ Two other manufacturers (names can be found in the original paper) provides POU systems with lower consistency in the produced water quality but a lower price of about 80 USD for a 4-member family living in low-income economies. The price is about 8% of their annual income.⁸

Reverse osmosis POU systems & Ultrafiltration POU systems: These two systems are mainly made of plastic, which is less vulnerable than ceramic when falling on ground or dashing with other things. However, both of them, as sold by the manufacturers, provide better water qualities at a price of twice or 3 times of the ceramic POU systems.

Price is a major factor which determines if a system is successfully applied in rural areas

This shuts the door for the reverse osmosis

One could say that the major factor determines whether a system could be successfully applied in rural areas is the price, which immediately shut the door for the reverse osmosis POU systems and ultrafiltration POU systems. It might be true for the reverse osmosis POU systems, since the system provides unnecessarily high water quality resulting in high capital and maintenance cost due to fouling caused by natural organic and inorganic compounds.

Ultrafiltration POU systems provide best filtration and price balance but are not a fix all

However, the statement does not hold for the ultrafiltration POU systems. An ultrafiltration POU system usually has very high removal efficiency of turbidity and more than 99.99% kill of bacteria. ⁷ However, it does not reject many of natural organic and inorganic compounds in water, resulting in less possibility of fouling of the filter. Therefore, the capital and maintenance cost of ultrafiltration filter could be lower. In addition, the development of the materials and the fabrication process could further reduce its cost.

Ultrafiltration POU systems deliver high efficiency at low costs

Even the price of ultrafiltration POU systems can be reduced to 80 USD for a 4-member family living in low-income economies, it is still high. If some proper pre-treatment is applied, the price could be further reduced by extending the lifespan of the systems. Designing of those pre-treatment processes requires well-trained engineers.

Ultrafiltration POU systems cannot treat all contaminates therefore other processes also needed

In some cases, microbial contamination in water is not the only problem. Water source can be contaminated by harmful natural minerals, industrial wastewater, or landfill leachate. Simple units including pre-treatment enhanced ultrafiltration POU systems could not guarantee the water quality. Other treatment processes should be implemented. But the cost for treating water will significantly increase. In these cases, when the cost is too high, reaching for a new water source is necessary.

2014 State of Environment Report Review -China's overall environmental quality in 2014 was "average", but with polluters tampering with monitoring, can we even believe this data? We take a closer look at the mixed news

WaterHubs: Infrastructure for Urban Slums - 523 million or 61% of the urban slum population in developing countries is in Asia. Saurabh Saraf, WaterHubs CEO, outlines how WaterHubs can deliver holistic & fiscally viable water & sanitation solutions for slums

The War on Water Pollution - Premier Li Keqiang has just declared war on pollution. Tan expands on the government's stratagems & offensives and fundamental changes required to shore up the MEP's arsenal in order to wage a successful war

Drinking water

Drinking Water Safety Faces "The Big Test" - In wake of the upcoming 'Water Pollution Prevention & Control Action Plan' China Water Risk & chinadialogue investigated the true status of China's urban and rural drinking water

Rural Drinking Water Far From Solved - Experts say the Chinese government's plan to 'completely solve' the problem of rural drinking water safety by the end of 2015 is a 'mission impossible'. Find out why and more as CWR's Hongqiao Liu expand

Water Source: Who Is Responsible? - Data shows water source quality improving but some experts question how accurate this can be without a specific standard? Moreover, pollutants, ineffective treatment & unclear ministry responsibilities pose threats. CWR's Hongqiao Liu expands

Investments: 3 Thoughts - Investing in the water sector looks attractive with the Chinese government & consumers wanting water tariff hikes. Will water supply or wastewater treatment be the larger market? Debra Tan shares some on-ground views distilled from recent conversations

KAF Bio-Sand Filter: Arsenic Be Gone! - Arsenic contamination affects China's waters & soil, affecting health. Patrick Cox & Fan Chen tells us about how a bio-sand filter can remove arsenic from any source, be it natural or man-made

About Li Ling

Li is a PhD student in the department of Civil Engineering in the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He has done 5-years of research in the field of drinking water treatment. His research is developing new processes and equipment to reduce the cost in large-scale municipal drinking water and wastewater treatment. He is also keen in developing cost effective mini-scale or small-scale drinking water treatment device for people living in rural areas in developing countries.

Read more from Li Ling →

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Rural Drinking Water Solutions | China Water Risk

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Highlights -783mn people in rural areas still lack safe drinking water; two dozen infectious diseases are the main reason why-Rural water distribution systems like China's have upsides but also downsides; Point Of Use (POU) systems are best-Ultrafiltration POU system has high efficiency & low cost; still need other solutions as POU systems aren't a fix all WHO claimed that the world has met the Millennium Development Goal target of halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water in 2012, but there are still 783 million people living in rural areas lacking safe drinking water.

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8 Key Challenges In Rural Water Security

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8 Key Challenges In Rural Water Security

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On 25-26 June, CWR's Feng Hu was invited to speak at two sessions of China Europe Water Platform (CEWP) workshop , held during the Qingdao International Water Conference - "Relations of Rural Water and Food Security to the Water SDG" and "Addressing the Challenges - The Role of the Market & Innovation" - and sat on a panel on "Financing and how to develop bankable projects".
Rural water security is one of CWR's focus areas. Back in 2015, CWR published a joint investigatory report titled "This article provides updates since the launch of this report and also reflections based on discussion during the CEWP workshop. China's Long March To Safe Drinking Water "with chinadialogue, which identified ambiguous ownership, unclear water pricing mechanisms, immature market mechanisms, a lack of rural business models and governance as key issues hindering China from "completely solving" drinking water.
Ensuring safe and secure water supplies to 1.39bn people over a land mass of 9.6mn km ² (nearly the size of Europe), isn't an easy task for any government. By 2015, 98% of China's urban population and 93% of her rural counterparts had access to improved drinking water source (India fell 1% short on the urban measurement; see chart below).

FAO defines an "improved" source as "one that is likely to provide 'safe' water", but also admits the lack of established relationship between access to "improved" sources and access to "safe" water. According to WHO, an "improved" source could be " public taps or standpipes, tube wells or boreholes, protected dug wells, protected springs and rainwater collection", as well as " piped water on premises ". Despite such murky definition, both China and India have come a long way.

By 2020, China wants to provide centralised drinking water supply and tap water to at least 85% and 80% of its rural population, respectively. Financing will remain a challenge. Meanwhile, there are another eight key challenges to address to finish the last miles of this long march.

There are now more people living in the cities than in the rural areas in China. By the end of 2017, 58.52% of the population lived in urban areas. By 2020, this percentage is expected to rise to 60% as per 13FYP. As this trend continues, by 2050, rural population is expected to more than halve as per UN's 2018 projection ( see chart below).

As people become better off, the amount of resources consumed tends to increase, including the use of water ( see next point). Meanwhile, many rural people are moving into cities, pushing up the urban demand.

This means, even if future rural water supply coverage reaches 100%, the total number of served rural population in 2050 would actually be less than the current number. This has implications on choices of solutions and scale of new projects, as well as the allocation of financial resources.

2. Closing the urban and rural gap

The prioritisation on urbanisation meant that more resources have been allocated towards cities and counties. As a result, urban water supply has progressed and improved much faster.

Prioritisation on urbanisation means urban water supply has progressed & improved much faster

The Chinese administration under provinces and municipalities includes generally five levels: city (市), county (县), town (建制镇), township (乡), and natural villages (自然村). In addition, there are special zones at town and township level (镇乡级特殊区域). As shown in the left-below chart, water supply coverage in 2016 ranged from 98.4% in cities to 65.2% in natural villages. The total length of China's water supply pipelines could circle the earth at the equator 120 times!

On the use front, agriculture (mainly irrigation) is obviously a big user, representing 62.4% of China's total water use in 2016. For domestic water use, average daily per capita figure at township level has been on the rise, while that of city, county and town levels have peaked and stayed almost flat in the past few years ( see right-above chart). At village level, the 2016 figure was 74 L/day/pax: although there is no comprehensive historical data, it is assumed to be on the rise and will continue to increase.

3. Narrowing regional differences in rural water management

Rural water management varies between different administrative levels, but also across regions. There are over 2.6 million natural villages in China, one fifth of which have village committees (more structured governance & better access to public finance) and are called "administrative villages".

The chart below shows the share of administrative villages with centralised water supply and domestic wastewater treatment across provinces in 2016. At national level, the two shares stood at 68.7% and 20%, respectively. Only 5 provinces had both shares higher than the national level, all of which are located on the eastern coast with a highly urbanised population and developed economy.

Only 5 provinces had both shares (centralised water supply & domestic wastewater treatment) higher than national level...

...all of which have a highly urbanised population

Clearly, there is significant room for improvement for most provinces. Water supply and wastewater treatment (and discharge) hold the two ends of the life cycle of water management. To properly treat wastewater and control discharge is as important as ensuring stable and safe supply.

4. Decentralised solutions are important for small and remote villages

Another reason for the regional difference may be due to the size of villages. Amongst the >2.6 million natural villages, about 93% of them have a population less than 1,000 and 46% even have a population less than 200. Amongst the half million administrative villages, 47% of them fall under the 1,000-person mark ( see charts below).

A centralised drinking water source is defined as a water source that supplies a population over 1,000 people, according to "Technical guideline for delineating source water protection areas" (HJ338-2018) put into force on 1 st July 2018. So technically, the majority of villages would have to adopt decentralised solutions.

A lot of current efforts focus on expanding piped water supply systems. This makes sense for villages with a larger population. For those next to cities and counties, they can be connected to existing urban systems. Indeed, 33% of villages will be served by urban tap water systems by 2020.

But, for many small and remote villages, large infrastructure projects can be financially unfeasible and/or technologically difficult. They need effective and economic decentralised solutions. In some extreme natural conditions, the local governments even have to resort to " ecological migration ".

5. Protecting the quality of groundwater sources

From a life cycle point of view, ensuring rural water security is to ensure the quantity and quality of water from the source, the supply, the usage, wastewater treatment to wastewater discharge. The first step is to secure the source.

By the end of 2016, 47.7% of rural households use tap water for drinking; meanwhile, over 50% of rural households relied on groundwater water as their drinking source, where 41.6% relied on protected wells & springs, and another 8.7% relied on unprotected groundwater sources ( see chart below). Groundwater reliance is even higher in Central, Western and Northeastern China.

>50% of rural households relied on groundwater water as their drinking source...

...but >60% of groundwater monitoring stations & points still in very bad or bad quality condition in 2017

According to the latest State of Ecology & Environment report, despite the improvement in overall water quality, groundwater quality remains worrying, with over 60% of groundwater monitoring stations and points still in very bad or bad quality condition in 2017.

Clearly, this poses a risk for those who source water directly from wells and springs. But even for tap water users, there is still potential risk in case the water works malfunction or fail to remove certain pollutants, if the water was originally withdrawn from a polluted river or groundwater.

6. Pricing is important, but improving monitoring is more urgent

Pricing is important in managing supply and demand. Reforming the relatively low water tariffs and testing tax-based systems have been on the government to-do-list. Ongoing rural water tariff reform focuses on irrigation. Thanks to improved pricing and incentives such as water rights trading, irrigation water use has seen zero increase for five consecutive years. But, water price hikes are still seen as controversial for many smallholder farmers and low-income households. In addition, without water meters in place, it is unrealistic to think about fee collection, not to mention raising tariffs.

Merely 2.7% of the country's half million administrative villages monitor rural drinking sources...

...remote sensing & drones could improve the coverage & cut down costs

Monitoring of rural drinking water sources is also lagging. The Water Ten Plan sets no hard target. It is reported by State Council that 700 counties and around 14,000 villages monitored their drinking water quality in 2017. However, the results are not publicly available. Moreover, the number represents merely 2.7% of the country's half million administrative villages, or 0.5% if including all the natural villages.

Given the vast number of rural source points, adopting monitoring technologies such as remote sensing and drones could improve the coverage and cut down costs. For instance, satellite images have been used to monitor eutrophication and groundwater depletion. But, innovation is still needed to cover many other parameters.

7. Lack of national standards for rural drinking water sources & wastewater discharge

China has set up a relatively comprehensive system of standards to regulate the quality from water sources to wastewater discharge ( see table below). But, there is no specific national standard for rural drinking water sources, especially decentralised ones.

So far, only a handful provinces have issued local rural discharge standards...

...but they are either less stringent than urban standards or cover limited parameters

The existing general standards (GB18918-2002 & GB8978-1996) have no specific discharge limits on rural wastewater treatment facilities. So far, only a handful provinces have issued local rural discharge standards. However, they either adopted less stringent limits compared to those on urban and industrial pollution sources, or only covered a limited selection of monitoring parameters.

Once wastewater is released into the nature, it not only affects local water safety but could also lead to adverse impacts in the downstream. A national standard is needed to regulate rural wastewater discharge across the entire country.

8. Towards basin-wide management from mountains to the sea

Ensuring rural water security deals with a complex circular system from source to discharge. But it is much more than just water management. As shown above, many different demographic and socio-economic aspects as well as natural conditions interact and limit the progress of a region to move towards 100% access to safe water supply. On top of that, there is also the impact of climate change, from affecting the availability of water to increasing the risk of water-borne diseases.

All these factors are not static and are constantly changing the dynamics between demand and supply. Thus, we need a more holistic approach. It shouldn't be based on a simple aim of increasing supply or adding treatment facilities. The decision-making needs to take into consideration many different factors and scenarios.

In China, the change of mindset is already under the way. Earlier this year, we saw the end of " nine dragons managing water": the dispersed government responsibilities in water are now consolidated into two ministries ( see CWR review here). New initiatives on water governance such as river chiefs and eco-compensation between the upstream and downstream, will see wider adoption across the country.

All these point to a shift from single point management towards basin-wide management from mountains to the sea. The MEP reform that I talked about back in early 2014 is now a reality. I thus have great hopes and confidence that China will deliver safe and reliable water to all the rural households across the country, from Tien Shan mountains to coastal islands.

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8 Key Challenges In Rural Water Security | China Water Risk

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On 25-26 June, CWR's Feng Hu was invited to speak at two sessions of China Europe Water Platform (CEWP) workshop , held during the Qingdao International Water Conference - "Relations of Rural Water and Food Security to the Water SDG" and "Addressing the Challenges - The Role of the Market & Innovation" - and sat on a panel on " Financing and how to develop bankable projects".

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A non-profit initiative dedicated to addressing business and environmental risk arising from China's urgent water crisis.

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Special report: The victims of China's soil pollution crisis

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Special report: The victims of China's soil pollution crisis

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After initially declaring soil pollution data a "state secret", officials have slowly begun to acknowledge the gravity of the issue. (Image by Wu Di)

This is the first of a special three-part series of investigations jointly run by chinadialogue and Yale Environment 360, with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

When Zhang Junwei's uncle died in February 2012, he was only 50. In the three years that he had endured the cancer that killed him, surgeons had removed both his rectum and his bladder. "Perhaps he was better off dead," said Zhang, reflecting on his uncle's ordeal. "It was a release." Two years after his uncle's death, Zhang still refuses to name him, afraid that even now, talking about how his uncle lived - and died - could bring trouble down on the family.

Zhang's uncle lived in Fenshui, in Central China's Jiangsu province, a village of some 7,000 people that straddles a network of waterways on the western shore of Lake Tai, China's third largest freshwater lake. Lake Tai boasts 800 square miles of fresh water, shared between Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, and has been celebrated throughout Chinese history for its abundant fish and beautiful limestone landscape.

But as China's industrial boom gathered speed through the 1990s and the early years of the 21 st century, a new, metalled road connected the once sleepy village of Fenshui to the major highway networks being built across China. Factories began to cluster along the lakeshore and the village's traditional single-storey whitewashed houses, with their signature black-tiled roofs, were steadily replaced with two- and even three-storey houses, as factory wages brought a surge of prosperity to Fenshui. Zhang's uncle, like many of his neighbours, had found work in one of those factories.

His illness hit the small family hard. His only son was serving in the army when his father fell ill, and the soldier's wage was too small to cover the medical bills. Zhang's aunt took a factory job herself to support her sick husband, making the difficult choice to leave him unattended during her working day. The cancer was to consume the family's savings entirely, all spent in a fruitless effort to save his life. The patient struggled through his final days at home, getting up to see to his own needs until the day he finally collapsed while fetching a drink of water. He died later that day.

Zhang Junwei (whose name has been changed to protect his identity) believes that the cancer that ended his uncle's life was caused by soil pollution, a subject so sensitive in China that Zhang himself is still afraid to discuss it openly. Zhang has just turned 40 and, like his uncle, has lived all his life in Jiangsu, near the lake. His village of Zhoutie is just five miles from Fenshui and less than 40 miles from the county town of Yixing, in the heart of the Yangtze Delta, today China's biggest regional economy. For more than 1,000 years, Yixing and its surrounding countryside was an important source of grain for China, celebrated in poetry as far back as 960 AD for its benign climate and fertile soil, and famous for the manufacture of a dense, brown pottery that is still highly prized in China as the ideal material for teapots.

But today Yixing and the land around it sit in China's new industrial landscape. Since the 1990s, nearly 3,000 factories have been built on the once-beautiful shores of the lake. The chemical boom made Yixing one of China's richest county-level towns, with a GDP that reached 106.6 billion yuan (US$17.06 billion) in 2012.

It is also still an agricultural area: the road from Fenshui to Zhoutie runs between flat, regular fields of vegetables, these days more profitable crops than grain for farmers who live close to urban markets. But many local farmers have given up eating the crops they grow. They know that their vegetables are planted in soil polluted with cadmium, lead and mercury, heavy metals that are dangerous to human health. Zhang confessed that he rarely eats local produce either. "There's too much soil pollution," he said.

A 'state secret'

Soil pollution has received relatively little public attention in China. Despite the fact that it poses as big a threat to health as the more widely covered air and water pollution, data on soil pollution has been so closely guarded that it has been officially categorised as a "state secret". Until recently the Chinese government also resisted media efforts to draw attention to local cancer epidemics in China's newly industrial areas. It was not until February 2013 that the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) finally admitted that "cancer villages" existed in China, and released a list that included the area around Lake Tai and the villages of Fenshui and Zhoutie. Some civil society experts have estimated that there are 450 cancer villages in China, and believe the phenomenon is spreading.

The story of the cancer hotspot of Yixing is characteristic: in the rush to develop that engulfed China from the 1990s, local officials were eager to invite factories and chemical plants into the area, and their already weak environmental controls were often disregarded entirely. "Government officials just care about GDP," Zhang complained. "They were happy to welcome any polluting firm." So, for a time, were the villagers who found jobs in the new factories.

Unprocessed industrial wastewater discharging from the factories in Zhoutie Town has caused excessive levels of cadmium found in the river silt (Image by Wu Di)
The first real signs of the troubles to come were in Lake Tai itself, and were the subject of a long campaign by another resident of Yixing township, the fisherman turned environmentalist Wu Lihong. In the early 1990s, Wu grew worried about the deterioration of Lake Tai's once famously pure waters. He organised a local environmental monitoring group that he called Defenders of Tai Lake, to collect water samples from the lake and its feeder rivers.

For 16 years, Wu campaigned to draw attention to the lake's declining health, despite harassment from local officials and police and, by appealing to senior government officials, he succeeded in forcing more than 200 factories to close. But his campaign abruptly ended on April 13, 2007, when he was arrested and later sentenced to a three-year prison term on charges of extortion and blackmail. The following month, the Ministry of Environmental Protection named Yixing a "National Model City for Environmental Protection". Five days later, a toxic algae bloom turned the waters of Lake Tai into foul-smelling green sludge.

That episode, in the high summer of 2007, attracted international attention and was a major embarrassment for the national as well as the provincial government. According to the Lake Tai Basin Authority, more than 30 million people draw their drinking water from the basin's 53 water sources. A Zhoutie local official admitted to the government newspaper People's Daily that the algae bloom had caused a "water supply crisis", and said the lake's water "looked like soy sauce". The authorities finally acted.

At the end of 2006, Yixing had been home to 1,188 firms producing chemicals. By October 2013, after six years of "rectification", 583 had been closed down, merged or reopened as other types of business, as were 104 chemical plants in Zhoutie and 57 in neighbouring Taihua township. In late 2013, Yixing started a new round of chemical industry clean-up, with plans to deal with an additional 52 chemical firms over the next two years.

It all came too late for the campaigner Wu Lihong: he has now completed his prison term and his wife and daughter have moved overseas, but Wu himself remains subject to restrictions, including a ban on talking to the media. His harsh treatment is a reminder to other villagers that environmental activism carries a high cost.

Pollution remains a highly sensitive subject in the district. Most interviewees were too frightened to give their names, worried about how local officials might react. Others complained that official secrecy about pollution meant that they could not discover what dangers Zhoutie's toxic legacy might pose to their own health and that of their families. Zhang Junwei recalled that, when the pollution was at its worst, even people's sweat was discoloured. "Several of my relatives died from cancer very young," he said.

Although the local government has now closed the worst of the factories, the pollutants those factories had released in their wastewater or sludge ended up in the soil, and the toxic waste from those polluting years continues to threaten the health of the people of the area and beyond.

Zhang Junwei and villagers like him are well aware that cancer rates in their district have risen, and they suspect that pollution is the cause. They say the number of cancer victims started to increase 10 years ago, when local farmers began to fall ill and die. Their suspicions were well-founded: when crops are grown in soil contaminated with cadmium or other heavy metals, the grain absorbs the toxins. But even today, despite this awareness of what pollution can do, local farmers have little choice but to continue to plant: these are families that reaped no direct benefit from industrialisation and still have few alternative sources of income. The poorest still eat locally produced food, knowing it is contaminated.

Linking pollution and illness

Establishing a clear connection, however, between pollution and cancer is scientifically challenging. At Hohai University, in Jiangsu Province, Chen Ajiang, a sociologist who heads the university's Institute of the Environment and Sociology, admitted that the link between pollution and cancer is extremely complex, and it is difficult to pin down cause and effect.

In 2007, professor Chen won a government grant to study the interaction of human and water environments in the basins of Lake Tai and the Huai River. For five years, he and his four researchers carried out field studies in the provinces of Henan, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Guangdong, looking for evidence of the health impacts of water pollution. Professor Chen believed that pollution-related illness was damaging economic development, keeping villagers in poverty or driving them away from their native villages altogether. Although he admits that the medical world has not yet identified an undisputed link between pollution and cancer in the villages he studied, his team established beyond doubt that cancer villages exist and that the lives of those who live in them are severely impacted.

The pollution that chemical factories released in gas and sludge, and in the wastewater they discharged into Lake Tai and other local waterways, has now accumulated in the surrounding soil, but the government has been reluctant to acknowledge the scale of the problem: in April, 2013, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development awarded Zhoutie a "Habitat Environment Prize", an award, like the accolade given to Xining, that seems out of tune with the real state of Zhoutie's environment.

The use of unprocessed wastewaster for irrigation has casued cadmium rice crisis in the local area (Image by Wu Di)
In April 2013, the Jiangsu Geological Survey published part of a report that showed that heavy metal pollution in the Wuxi, Suzhou and Changzhou areas has increased continuously since 2004, with once isolated spots of pollution from cadmium and mercury now expanding and merging to form larger, continuous areas. The report, New technologies for monitoring and preventing heavy metal pollution resulting from urbanization, revealed that between 2005 and 2011 increasing levels of cadmium were found at 37.5% of the sites sampled, with average increases of 0.03 milligrams (mg) of cadmium per kilogram (kg) of soil. At its highest, the annual average increase was 0.2 mg.

Continuous monitoring revealed an escalating pattern of pollution: in one unspecified area, researchers reported, cadmium levels higher than 0.4 mg per kg of soil were found only in relatively isolated patches in the land surrounding industrial development. But by 2012, large stretches of nearby farmland were polluted to the same levels, and rice and wheat produced in the area were contaminated.

It also described one case -- later identified as the township of Dingshu, 18 miles to the southwest of Zhoutie -- where, due to a cluster of township enterprises that were dumping their waste, cadmium levels in the river silt had reached 1500 mg per kg, and that rice produced on nearby land was contaminated with cadmium to levels of more than 0.5 mg per kg. China's food safety standards rule that rice can contain no more than 0.2 mg per kg of cadmium, and the international limit is 0.4 mg per kg. Rice from Dingshu has long been in breach of those limits.

Dingshu is the centre of Yixing's ceramics industry, home to many glazed tile factories, teapot factories and clay workshops. Yixing's stoneware is an important source of revenue, but the factories have also badly damaged the local environment and contribute to the area's soil pollution. Yixing launched a crackdown on ceramic factories in early 2011, but by June 2013 only 300 had been fully shut down.

The area's problems illustrate the high price China is paying for 30 years of rapid economic development and the risks China's increasingly serious soil pollution poses to its food. Official estimates say that China produces 12 million tonnes of heavy-metal contaminated grain a year, with an economic cost of more than 20 billion yuan (US$3.2 billion).

A lack of transparency

China's official approach to soil pollution has been characterised by secrecy and obfuscation. Even now, a picture of the scale and severity of the problem must be pieced together from disparate reports.

In 2010, for instance, a report on soil protection policy from the international expert body, the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED), warned that overall trends in China's soil pollution gave no cause for optimism. Quoting China's official 1997 Report on the State of the Environment in China, it characterised the pollution of China's arable land as "rather severe", with pollution affecting an estimated 10 million hectares of land. By the year 2000, according to that year's report on the state of the environment, 36,000 of the 300,000 hectares of basic farmland monitored for harmful heavy metals were found to be more than 12% beyond the standard.

CCICED's researchers were no more optimistic about China's system of supervision and management of soil, finding that investment in soil pollution prevention and control was too low. They stressed that soil pollution reduces the quality of crops and recommended legislation to protect the soil and to control pollution, as well as improvement in China's environmental soil standards.

There are now signs that the gravity of the soil pollution problem is belatedly forcing the Chinese government to begin to deal with a problem that has accumulated over many decades, and to reconsider its policy of pursuing economic growth at the expense of the environment. In July 2007, the Ministry of Land and the National Bureau of Statistics launched a nationwide soil survey. It was completed in 2009, but partial results were not published until December 2013. In April 2014, the government released partial results of a second soil pollution survey, conducted from April 2005 to December 2013, and covering 630 square kilometres (243 square miles) of farmland. The survey reported that about 16.1% of China's soil and about 19.4% of farmland were contaminated.

China has 135 million hectares of arable land in total, but the amount of available high quality arable land has been dropping due to advancing urbanisation and pollution. According to the recently released data, the government classifies more than 3 million hectares of arable land as moderately polluted. How much of that is contaminated with heavy metals is still not clear, though in 2011, Wang Bentai, then chief engineer of the State Environmental Protection Agency (now the Ministry of Environmental Protection) said that 10% of China's arable land is polluted with lead, zinc and other heavy metals.

Starting to clean up?

Rising public concern about the impacts of pollution have begun to force a change in government attitudes, but changes at the top can take some time to percolate down to lower levels of government. In November 2013, delegates to the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee - an important party meeting - adopted a key strategy document that set out the government's priorities for the immediate future.

The document, prosaically entitled Decision on Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening Reforms, promised that environmental protection would be given more importance in the performance evaluation of local and national officials, and that local officials would be considered directly responsible for pollution. Economic growth would no longer guarantee promotion for local officials. The government also promises to put in place the legislation and powers to allow polluters to be heavily punished, a promise that began to take shape in the new environmental protection law, approved in April 2014, which removed the caps that had kept fines for polluters low.

However, Zhuang Guotai, the head of the MEP's Department of Nature and Ecology Conservation, has said that cleaning up soil pollution is a difficult and lengthy process that will require huge investment. In some cases, he explained, the pollution the ministry had identified in soil samples could be traced back decades: pollution from the pesticide benzene hexachloride, for instance, a substance banned in the 1980s, was still in evidence.

Mr Zhuang promised that an action plan to deal with soil pollution will pull together both central and local government and businesses, using market mechanisms to promote soil restoration, with rewards systems in place to encourage public participation. A new law on soil pollution is also promised. But soil remediation is expensive and complex, and there are no easy answers to a pollution nightmare that has brought early death to the afflicted villages, reduced harvests and rendered much of China's home-grown food toxic.

The second part of this three-part investigation will be published next week.

Soil Pollution Series
Special report: the legacy of Hunan's polluted soils

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Special report: The victims of China's soil pollution crisis

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This is the first of a special three-part series of investigations jointly run by chinadialogue and Yale Environment 360, with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting When Zhang Junwei's uncle died in February 2012, he was only 50.