Beijing - Chinese officials promised swift steps on Friday to clean up a lake after an algae outbreak choked off water to an eastern city amid a rising public outcry about the nation's sullied water sources.
Taihu Lake in Jiangsu province has been struck by a rapidly spreading canopy of blue-green algae that has left water supplies for nearby Wuxi putrid and undrinkable. Convoys of trucks have been taking bottled water to aid residents.
Jiangsu was seeding clouds in an effort to bring rain to flush out the lake, the Chinese government Web site (www.gov.cn) reported. It had also launched efforts to draw more water from the Yangtze River into the lake, the country's third largest.
Continues Below ↓
But the Communist Party chief of Jiangsu, Li Yuanchao, acknowledged that the scare exposed deeper failings.
"In future development we must be determined to make stronger efforts to clean up Taihu Lake and ensure its water quality and safety," Li said, according to a report posted by the State Environmental Protection Administration (www.sepa.gov.cn).
Li said small chemical plants around the lake must be closed and more waste water plants must be built.
A Wuxi city official, Zhu Zhongxian, said water drawn from the lake was becoming cleaner, a Jiangsu newspaper reported. He denied an Internet-spread rumour that Wuxi was preparing to blow up walls separating the lake from the Yangtze.
But residents and media said the emergency steps merely exposed a long-term failure to protect lakes and rivers, tainted by pollution and strained by population and economic growth.
In 2005, millions of residents of Harbin in northeast China had their taps turned off for weeks after a toxic spill in the Songhua River.
"We've got a lot of complaints," one Wuxi resident, an engineer surnamed Xiang, told Reuters by phone.
Continues...
|
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Newsvine
Facebook
muti
Twitter
