Shandong Province will invest more than
US$1.17 billion into creating a "clean water corridor" along part
of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project.
The cash will help fund about 315 initiatives by the eastern
route of the scheme to combat water pollution, according to Zhang
Kai, head of the Shandong Environment Protection Bureau.
The water diversion project will channel water from the
country's longest river, the Yangtze River, to northern China.
The eastern route goes through Shandong Province, which is
designed to transfer water from east China's Jiangsu Province on the Yangtze River into Tianjin in north China.
Around 130 sewage treatment plants will be built, along with 149
industrial pollution control projects, 21 polluted water diversion
schemes and 16 comprehensive pollution control initiatives.
To date, 73 of the projects have been completed, 36 are still
under construction and work is expected to be under way on the rest
of the schemes by the end of the year.
Pollution control is the main priority for the eastern route,
which passes many polluted cities, according to Zhang.
The official promised to ensure the water quality along the
Shandong section of the line would reach at least Grade III, the
minimum standard for drinking water, before June 2007.
Forty-four sewage plants in the Shandong section will be
pipelined for nitrogen and phosphorus removal by the end of next
year.
"It is especially important that environmental awareness and
governmental confidence in pollution prevention along the route
increases," Zhang told China Daily.
Officials said the province's emphasis was on developing a
comprehensive pollution-control scheme combining urban pollution
management, waste water recycling, agricultural pollution control
and biological wetland construction.
All businesses along the line are required to reach certain
environmental protection standards.
Meanwhile, statistics indicate that fertilizers running off
26,000 hectares of farmland, reclaimed in the 1970s, into Nansi
Lake and Dongping Lake account for one-tenth of the total
phosphorus and nitrogen pollution along the eastern route.
The province plans to invest US$170 million in returning the
agricultural land to clean wetland.
Before the water diversion project began in December 2002,
Shandong made efforts to reduce pollution along what would become
the part of the route of the scheme.
Statistics indicate that compared with 2000, discharges of major
pollutants, such as ammonia and nitrogen, had declined by 20
percent and 30 percent respectively, by 2005.
In the past five years, Shandong has closed 70 paper mills and
all alcoholic production facilities with capacities of less than
5,000 tons to reduce the risk of pollution. More than 33 waste
water treatment plants have also been built, with a total daily
disposal capacity of 1.75 million cubic meters.
(China Daily June 28, 2006)