Report shows Yangtze water environment deteriorating
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2007-04-15 16:08:34
　CHANGSHA, April 15 (Xinhua) — The first annual health report on the Yangtze River indicates that the billions of tons of waste that continue to be dumped into China’s longest waterway are taking a serious toll its aquatic life.
The 2007 annual report on Yangtze River protection and development shows that more than 600 kilometers of the river are in critical condition. The report says almost 30 percent of its major tributaries, including the Minjiang, Tuojiang, Xiangjiang and Huangpu rivers, are seriously polluted.
The report says the river’s annual harvest of aquatic products dropped from 427,000 tons in the 1950s to about 100,000 tons in the 1990s.
A separate study by the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission shows cities along the river discharge at least 14.2 billion tons of polluted water every year, 42 percent of China’s total.
Pollution, damming and too many boats have caused a dramatic decline in Yangtze aquatic life. While rare species such as the white-flag dolphin are thought to be on the verge of extinction, even common species such as carp are gasping for survival, the report said.
“The impact of human activities on the Yangtze water ecology is largely irreversible,” said Yang Guishan, a researcher of the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and one of the chief editors of the report. “It’s a pressing job to regulate such activities in all the Yangtze drainage areas and promote harmonious development of man and nature.”
The report, complied by Yang’s institute, the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission and the WWF, also warned of the higher flood risks.
The Yangtze accounts for about 35 percent of China’s total fresh water resources but it’s also responsible for 70 to 75 percent of the country’s floods, the report said.
“Flood control remains an arduous task along the Yangtze, given the rising temperature and frequent occurrences of extreme weather over the last 50 years,” said Yang.
Although the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest water storage facility, has reduced flood risks in the middle reaches, the risk of flooding remains high in the lower reaches, he said.
The report also assessed the Three Gorges Dam project, showing its huge reservoir is seriously polluted by pesticides, fertilizers and sewage from passenger boats.
China allocated 4 billion yuan (513 million U.S. dollars) in 2002 to offset the impact of the dam on the ecology, the local environment and the local people, said Prof. Weng Lida, former head of the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission, adding that more cash is coming.
“We have to take into consideration the proper settlement of the people who have been displaced, environmental protection, heavy silting and the prevention of geological disasters,” said Weng who cautioned that “faster is not always better.”
The water level in the Three Gorges reservoir reached a landmark 156 meters last October, but some provinces want the level to go higher so more electricity can be produced, Weng said.
“Higher water levels will worsen pollution and silting. We have to seek more sustained development,” he said.
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NW China dam bursts, villages, farmland flooded
2007-04-19
LANZHOU, April 19 (Xinhua) — A dam in northwest China’s Gansu Province cracked around 12 o’clock on Thursday, causing water from its reservoir to flood surrounding farmland and two villages downstream, local authorities report.
It is still not known whether there are any casualties. Rescue teams have been dispatched to the flood-hit areas to evacuate residents.
Located in Taigao County, the Xiaohaizi Reservoir, has a storage capacity of 3.5 million cubic meters and was put into operation in 2004.
Editor: Lu Hui
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China urgently needs to protect its wetlands
2007-04-19
CHANGSHA, April 19 (Xinhua) — China will spend 16.5 billion yuan to protect and restore its wetlands during the 11th five-year-plan period (2006-2010).
Addressing a recent forum on the Yangtze River held in Changsha, the capital of Central China’s Hunan Province, Zhu Lieke, deputy head of the State Forestry Administration, said China has made an inventory of 173 wetlands, most of which are in northeast China and the Yangtze River Valley.
Thirty of the country’s wetlands are listed in the international wetland catalogue, and one third of them are situated along the Yangtze.
“Phenomena such as the rapid drop in the number of lakes and fast shrinkage in lake area got worse as China’s economy tears through resources,” said Zhu, who warned that wetlands in the Yangtze River Valley face unprecedented ecological threats.
“The problems that plague wetlands in the Yangtze River Valley include pollution, ecological degradation and dwindling water resources,” said Zhu. “The protection of our wetlands is urgent.”
The 6,300-km-long Yangtze, the country’s longest, originates in the Tanggula Range on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and passes through Qinghai, Tibet, Sichuan, Yunnan, Chongqing, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu and Shanghai before emptying into the East China Sea.
Wetlands in the Yangtze River Valley include salty plateau lakes and plateau marshlands, the galaxy of lakes on the middle reaches of the Yangtze, and the coastal wetland near Chongming Island at the estuary of the river.
Dongting Lake, which flows into the Yangtze River and also serves as an important wetland, for instance, is shockingly polluted. Marine life has been decimated and people are catching a disease called schistosomiasis — caught by swimming or wading in water where there are parasitic worms.
The water area of Dongting Lake has shrunk from 4,350 sq km in 1949 to present 2,625 sq km as a result of silting and land reclamation for farming.
According to Zhu, the country has already launched three programs to protect the wetlands in the Yangtze River Valley, including the national program for conservation of wildlife, plants and nature reserves, and the program to protect the Sanjiangyuan wetland in Qinghai Province. But much remains to be done.
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1,700 evacuated as villages flooded
By Xie Chuanjiao
Updated: 2007-04-20
More than 1,700 villagers were forced to evacuate their homes after a dam at a local reservoir burst Thursday at Gaotai County in Northwest China’s Gansu Province.
Xinhua reported that no one was injured but hundreds of hectares of cropland were flooded and two downstream villages were in danger.
The dam by the Xiaohaizi Reservoir burst at about noon yesterday. Local authorities dispatched rescue teams to the flood-hit areas to help evacuate residents.
“Water has entered into some farmers homes in Xiaohaizi Village,” the report said. There were no casualties.
The majority of the water flowed into Heihe River at 2 pm, after crossing farmland and Gobi areas.
By late yesterday afternoon, water was still running out of the reservoir. No official statistics were available on the total loss since the water continued to pose a threat to farmland, tunnels and villages.
A local resident surnamed Li, who lives about 8 km from the reservoir, said the economic loss could be disastrous for locals.
“I don’t think farmers in the two villages will be able to harvest anything this year,” Li told China Daily during a telephone interview. “The wheat, corn and tomato plants were not yet fully grown, and now they are all dead.”
A local family could earn 20,000 ($2,600) to 30,000 yuan a year.
She said the accident could be attributed to the continuous heavy rain during the past several days.
“The heavy rain is so strange for us during this season. I heard some 17 homes in the nearby Minshui River injured both people and livestock the other day.”
She complained that the reservoir was not strong enough and things could worsen as water continues to pour down.
The reservoir was put into operation in 2004 after two years of construction. Water comes mainly from melting snow atop the Qilian Mountain.
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China makes artificial snow fall in Tibet
2007-04-18
LHASA, April 18 (Xinhua) — China has succeeded in creating artificial snow in the northern part of the Tibet Autonomous Region for the first time, according to the local meteorological department.
Taking advantage of suitable weather conditions, the Tibet meteorological station carried out an artificial snowfall operation in Nagqu County in northern Tibet on April 10 at an altitude of about 4.500 meters.
“This proves it’s possible for humans to change the weather on the world’s highest plateau,” said Yu Zhongshui, an engineer with the meteorological station.
Just 1 cm of snow lay on the ground after the artificial snowfall.
In human history, weather control has traditionally been reserved for ancient sky “gods” but, over the last sixty years, scientists have become increasingly interested in tampering with the weather, claiming that they can benefit mankind.
As well as China, countries such as the United States, Australia, Russia, Pakistan, India and Thailand have all carried out artificial rain-making projects.
The approaches involve the use of chemicals like silver iodide to precipitate rain. They may be released from aircraft, or fired from the ground as flares.
The jury is still out on the long-term effects of this kind of climate engineering, or “pluviculture”.
Chuffed by the Chinese ‘success’, Yu said that it is considered difficult to generate artificial snow or rain in high altitude areas, because the conditions are not conducive to the formation of hydrometeors — such as rain, snow, fog or clouds — formed by the condensation of water vapor in the atmosphere.
“Artificial precipitation can help alleviate summer droughts on the northern Tibet grasslands,” Yu argued.
“It will benefit people raising livestock,” he added.
Tibet experienced a warmer winter this year —- a result of the global warming trend. The average temperature on the plateau was 2.7 degrees higher than in normal years.
Global warming has led to the acceleration of glacial melt in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, dubbed as the “Roof of the World.”
The plateau, regarded as a barometer of world climate conditions, has seen its glaciers melt at an annual average rate of 131.4 square kilometers over the past three decades.
Shrinking of glaciers as well as drought of lakes and decrease of grassland are threatening the plateau, geologists said
The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is the cradle of three main Chinese rivers, the Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang rivers. Most of the Chinese civilization emerged along the valleys of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers.
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Two villages flooded as dam bursts in north-west China
Published: Thursday April 19, 2007
Beijing- Floodwater engulfed two villages after a dam burst on Thursday in north-western China’s Gansu province, officials and state media said.
The dam began to crack at around midday and about 15 metres of the10-metre-high dam wall collapsed, allowing water to pour out of the Xiaohaizi reservoir onto surrounding farmland in Gansu’s Gaotai county, the government’s Xinhua news agency said.
Rescue teams were sent to the area to evacuate local residents and state media had reported no casualties by early Thursday evening.
Officials in Gaotai’s Nanhua township, where the two villages are located, said they were “not clear” about the flooding and refused to give further details.
The reservoir was built in 2004 and has a storage capacity of 3.5 million cubic metres, the agency said.
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Farmland flooded after reservoir cracks
2007-04-19
LANZHOU, April 20 (Xinhua) — About 3.6 square kilometers of farmland and eight wells were flooded after the embankment of a reservoir in northwest China’s Gansu Province cracked around midday on Thursday.
Seven houses and dozens of sheep pens were destroyed, but no casualties were reported, according to the local government on Friday.
Water flowed through Xiangdao village about eight kilometers downstream from the reservoir and into an adjacent river, deluging farmland on the way.
A highway bridge linking Gaotai Township with Xiangdao Village was destroyed by the water and the highway was closed.
Local residents and workers have begun to repair the roads, trenches and other facilities destroyed by the water. On late Thursday, the water flow had slowed to a trickle and the bottom of the reservoir could be seen.
The embankment of Xiaohaizi reservoir in Gaotai County cracked at 12:10a.m. Thursday, local authorities reported.
The rift in the ten-meter-high dam was reportedly 30 meters long and water came pouring out towards four downstream villages. The maximum water flow was about 90 cubic meters per second.
Wang Aiqin, head of the publicity department of the Gaotai county government, said about 1,700 residents were initially evacuated but most of them have now returned to their homes.
There had been downpours earlier in the week, and excessive rainfall may be a factor in the crack, Wang said, adding that water conservancy experts have been asked to investigate the cause of the burst.
The Xiaohaizi Reservoir consist of three reservoirs with a total storage capacity of about 10 million cubic meters. It was initially built in 1958, and has gone through several renovations and expansion projects. The most recent renovation lasted two years from 2002 to 2004.
The crack appeared on the lowest reservoir of the three, which stored about 2.8 million cubic meters of water.
Local repairmen have started inspecting the other reservoirs and so far found no hazards, according to the county government.
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China likens its reservoirs to ‘time bombs’
2007-04-20 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BEIJING, Apr 20 (AP) — A burst dam in northwestern China that forced the evacuation of 1,700 people is a warning that the country faces “time bombs” in thousands of its reservoirs, state media said Friday.
Deputy Minister of Water Resources Jiao Yong was quoted by the Xinhua News Agency as describing the structurally unsound reservoirs as “time bombs” that the government wants repaired within three years.
“The problematic reservoirs are like time bombs, seriously threatening the lives and property of people living downstream,” the agency quoted Jiao as saying at a national meeting on efforts to repair the reservoirs.
Of China’s 85,000 reservoirs, 30,000 had serious problems, the report said, including 200 large and 1,600 medium-sized reservoirs.
Jiao said in the report that the government would spend 5 billion yuan (US$647 million; €475 million) a year on repairs.
A dam on the Xiaohaizi reservoir in Gansu province cracked Thursday, flooding the surrounding area and destroying a highway bridge, Xinhua said.
The crack on the 10-meter (33-foot) -high dam measured 15 meters (49 feet), the report said, adding 1,700 people had to be evacuated from four villages.
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