China Offers Plan to Clean Up Its Polluted Lakes

The Chinese government unveiled a detailed plan on Tuesday to limit pollution in China’s lakes by 2010 and return them to their original state by 2030.

The State Council, China’s cabinet, ordered strict regulation of the release of wastewater, the closing of heavily polluting factories near lakes, the improvement of sewage treatment facilities and strict limits on fish farms, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

The council also banned the use of pesticides with highly toxic residue near large lakes as well as detergents containing phosphorus.

While national leaders in Beijing have shown greater interest in recent months in cleaning up the environment, their efforts have frequently met resistance from provincial and local officials more interested in maximizing economic growth.

China’s three main lakes, Tai, Chaohu and Dianchi, have all had algae blooms in recent years. Stimulated by high levels of phosphorus and other chemicals, algae has blanketed large areas of water, killing fish and making the water undrinkable for large numbers of people living nearby.

An algae bloom that covered a large area of Lake Tai last spring was particularly severe and received national attention. The toxic cyanobacteria produced a choking odor up to a mile from the lake’s shores and prevented two million people nearby from drinking or cooking with the water.

Wastewater from fish farms has become another serious problem, and one that the State Council tried to address on Tuesday, ordering that all fish farms be removed from the three main lakes by the end of this year. Fish farms elsewhere are to be more tightly limited to certain designated areas within three years, Xinhua said.

The water cleanup effort will also include the lake behind the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River. Environmentalists warned before the dam was built that it would be hard to prevent toxic pollution from building up in the lake once the river was no longer carrying pollution out to the ocean.

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