Don’t Fall in the River!

In 2000, six people died due to poisoning. They were poisoned by contact with the polluted water of a tributary of the Huai River. A citizen of Xiunzou, a city in the basin of the River, told a foreign journalist: “…the water here is always polluted...we can’t even wash our clothes in this water... and when we tried to give it to the pigs, they refused it.”

The Huai River (also Huái Hé) is one of China’s principal rivers. Its valley, home to circa 200 million people, has been long known for its rich supply of wheat, cotton, oilseed, and fish. The river runs east for 1,078 kilometers through the Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu Provinces.

The history of this river is dramatic. It originally reached the sea, but at the end of the 12th century the Yellow River repeatedly turned southwards, running into the Huai River. The geography of the river basin changed and during the World War II the government, in its attempt to block the Japanese invasion, flooded the lower Huai basin. As a result, the Huai River now flows into Lake Hongze, and then runs southwards into the Yangtze River. This makes it notoriously vulnerable to flooding.

After the disastrous floods of 1950, Mao Zedong compelled ten million people to forced labor in order to construct 195 dams along the river. In 1975 two of the largest dams collapsed, killing 230,000 people.

In the last few decades, tens of thousands of small industries, mainly chemical factories, have been built along its banks. They proceeded to dump their waste water into the river, which is now incredibly polluted. Along its banks, the death rate is 1.3 times higher than the average for the province and the cancer rate is double. A report compiled in the late 1990s stated that for years not one young man from the the villages in the basin had been healthy enough to enter the army. At that time, less than half of the industries were using their waste treatment plants and only 25% of the treated water met state standards. This secured lower costs and greater profits for the companies.

In 1998 the water in Xiunzou, a city downstream of the Huai, turned black, fish died and people had no running water for weeks. Only few days earlier the central government had announced the “environmental resurrection” of the river. Su Kiansheng, professor at the Huainan Industrial College, said the water was actually Grade V (unsuitable even for irrigation).

In 2000 in Fuyang, known as a “Clean Industry City,” 10 people fell into the main seawage channel. Six of them died due to having been exposed to contaminated water. The local government refused to spend $30 million USD required to clean the wastewaters, arguing that this would require the closure of most of the industries.

Like most Chinese industrial cities, Fuyang was paying the consequences of corruption: factory owners were advised before the environmental watchdogs made their visits, so the illegal waste discharges were temporarily shot down.

Sources:
The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future, Elizabeth C. Economy, Cornell University Press, 2004.
Eco-efficiency analysis of paper mills along the Huai River: An extended DEA approach, Omega,
Volume 35, 2007.
Rural industries and water pollution in China, Journal of Environmental Management,
Volume 86, 2008.
http://www.earthportal.org/news/?p=439
http://www.wepa-db.net/policies/state/china/river.htm

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