英闻天下——353 Understanding Water and Groundwater Pollution

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　　In response, the Shandong provincial² environment protection department has sent 320 officers to over 700 suspected factories to investigate.

 

　　24 hours later, regulators announced none of the factories are using deep wells to dump waste water.

 

　　The Weifang city government is offering a 100,000 Yuan reward to anyone who can report specific violators.

 

　　The public seems unconvinced.

 

　　Director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs Ma Jun says deep well discharges are not the only cause of underground water pollution.

 

　　"In our collection of records of violations³, there are cases of factories discharge chemicals directly into the pit or well, which cause serious contamination. Having said that, the most common practice is to discharge chemicals into rivers and lakes, and eventually all these polluting chemicals go to the ground aquifer⁴. This is the major cause of the widespread contamination of ground water especially in North China."

 

　　The China Geological Survey shows about 90 percent of underground water is not drinkable, with 60 percent badly polluted.

 

　　Monitoring data from 118 cities shows nearly 64 percent of cities have is severely⁵ contaminated underground water, 33 percent mildly polluted, while only 3 percent of cities have generally clean water.

 

　　China's national government cabinet The State Council issued a guideline last February to regulate the use of water and," tighten⁶ supervision⁷ over the exploitation of underground water.

 

　　And the government has allocated⁸ 500 billion yuan for the prevention and control of water pollution in major drainage areas from 2011 to 2015.

 

　　Ma Jun says the rules will still be difficult to implement⁹.

 

　　"I think the difficulty is that the protection given by the local government to the polluters, which are major tax payers and job creators, and also the fact that the judicial¹⁰ system needs to be future improved and more independent. All these are deep rooted problems that can not be solved quickly."

 

　　He says extensive public participation¹¹ is needed to check the malpractices damaging our limited water resources.

 

　　For today on beyond Beijing, I'm Zengliang.

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