Tap water in 'deep trouble'

Tap water in 'deep trouble'

By Kang Juan

More than 16 percent of residents in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) area, a major manufacturing base in South China's Guangdong Province, don't use tap water for drinking, even after boiling, for fear of water pollution, according to a survey by a Guangzhou research agency.

A water resources expert conceded that the findings reflect the suspicion and skepticism of local people toward water quality, and that the problem of water pollution will eventually hinder local and national economic development.

According to the result of the phone survey carried out by the Guangzhou Public Opinion Research Center, a local NGO, 43 percent of 2,006 residents in nine major cities in the PRD interviewed see "water pollution" as the most serious prob-lem among pollution to water, air, sound, light and soil.

People in China seldom drink water directly from faucets or wells. Even though they believe it is clean, they prefer to drink it after boiling it.

A quarter of the people polled would not even drink boiled tap water, and 65.6 percent of them worry about low water quality, the survey showed.

Touting the report as the first to show public opinion toward water quality in the delta area, the agency said it is aimed at "allowing the public to have a better idea of the environmental conditions they live in," according to a staff member surnamed Su.

A Guangzhou citizen surnamed Zeng complained that the tap water is erosive, that his towel only lasted several months before it suffered holes.

"Who dares drink such water?" the Southern Metropolis Daily quoted Zeng as asking.

Another Guangzhou citizen surnamed Li, however, argued that water quality in Guangzhou is improving year by year with efforts made by the municipal government.

"In the urban area of Guangzhou, water quality has met the minimum standard required for daily use, while in the suburban areas of the city, tap water can hardly be used for cooking and drinking," Li said.

The water quality of the Pearl River and its tributaries has deteriorated significantly since the region's remarkable economic growth began with the opening up of China's economy in the late 1970s. The delta area, which includes the major cities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Dongguan, with more than 40 million residents, had 210 cement plants, 338 ceramics plants and 29 plate-glass producers, according to an official survey in 2007.

According to a report released by Greenpeace last month, factories in the PRD are poisoning the area. The environmental group said it ana-lyzed 25 samples of wastewater discharge from several industrial sites and found a "diverse range of hazardous chemicals," including heavy metals associated with causing brain damage, which are hard to remove from the environment once released.

The Pearl River – China's third-longest - and its surrounding area will suffer irreversible damage if the government

doesn't impose strict environmental regulations on the manufacturing heartland, Greenpeace said.

"'Made in China' products are being manufactured at a high cost to the Pearl River," said Edward Chan, campaign manager for Greenpeace China.

"If the results of our sampling are any indication of what factories in general are doing in China, then China's waters are in deep trouble."
 
90 billion yuan down the drain

According to a September report on the prevention and control of water pollution in 2008, China is facing an arduous mission to improve water quality, as 30 percent of the country's major river drainage areas had not met the State-required standard by the end of 2008.

The quality of major water resources, including three rivers and three lakes, has failed to register a remarkable improvement despite more than 90 billion yuan in investment in six consecutive years, according to an audit report released on October 28.

Wang Hao, an academic at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, attributed the failure to the country's problematic guidelines for water pollution treatment, which emphasize technology but neglect management and pollution-source reduction.

"Without a sound pollution control system and technical approach, another 90 billion yuan will also be futile," he said.

Wang Jian, a veteran water resources expert at the Nature University, a Beijing-based NGO, noted that the current amount of industrial pollution was beyond the affordability of the ecosystem.

"It makes ecological restoration almost impossible. Human restoration, instead, will be much more costly and time-consuming," Wang said.

Most of the measures were designed to deal with the existing pollution. But new projects each year would bring new environmental problems, Wang added.

China published a regulation in August to enforce environmental evaluation on new development projects from October, in an effort to stem pollution or ecological destruction from the start.

Early this month, Guangdong Province ordered a halt to any further expansion of three major polluting industries, including the cement, ceramics and plate-glass production facilities, in the PRD.

Qiu Wei, Zhang Han and