China - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 264

Water pollution is a major problem. Shanghai citizens were shocked
recently to find hundreds of dead pigs floating in the Huangpu River. Soon
the total reached 16,000. The carcasses had been dumped upstream in the
Jiaxing area of Zhejiang province. Evidently, unscrupulous farmers had
discarded them because police had started cracking down on the illicit
sale of pork products made from diseased pigs who had died.
Statistics demonstrate the larger problem. One report lists 436 of the
country's 532 rivers as polluted. The danger is greatest in the north where
the climate is arid, hence water volume is low. The contamination comes
from industrial waste, chemical fertilizers, and raw sewage. Around 90%
of household sewage and a third of industrial wastewater is discharged
without treatment. Nearly 80% of the cities have no sewage treatment
plants. Pollution of the rivers makes it hard to obtain drinking water.
Moreover, wells as a source of drinking water face the problem that 90%
of the groundwater is contaminated. Municipalities have tried to provide
sewage treatment by requiring that newly constructed buildings have
treatment facilities, but this leads to multiple, small, inefficient plants.
Like any other industrial country, most pollution in China is chronic;
that is, every day a small (or not so small) amount of fertilizer, chemicals,
and household waste flows onto a river or lake. However, other times the
pollution comes from a dramatic accident, when a large amount escapes.
China is particularly prone to this. One study estimates that it suffers a
water emergency every two or three days. (In comparison a Western coun-
try might suffer a few a year.) In November 2005 at a plant of the Jilin
Petrochemical Corporation in China's northern Jilin Province exploded,
resulting in a hundred tons of benzene, aniline, and nitrobenzene flowing
into the Songhua River. Downstream it flowed into the Amur River in
Russia. In December 2009, 150,000 liters of diesel fuel spilled from a China
National Petroleum Corporation pipeline in Shaanxi province, some
two-thirds of which flowed into the Wei and Chishui rivers, tributaries
of the Yellow River. In July 2001 tributaries of the Huai River overflowed
their banks due to heavy rains, picking up 150 billion liters of severely
polluted water. Downstream the river was filled with toxic chemicals,
sewage and garbage. The contamination endangered 150 million people. 7
China's biggest river, the Yangtze, 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% of all wastewater flows into the
river; only 20% is treated beforehand. Fish catches are only 100,000 tons