PRC Academy Of Sciences - 3 Gorges Reservoir, Yangtze Filthy, Impact "Largely Irreversible"

[hatrack]

BEIJING - China's Three Gorges Dam reservoir has been fouled by pesticides, fertilizers and sewage, and more than 600 kilometres of the Yangtze river are critically polluted, Xinhua news agency said on Sunday, citing a report.

The joint report by an institute at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the international WWF organization and the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission also said nearly 30 percent of the river's major tributaries, including the Minjiang, Tuojiang, Xiangjiang and Huangpu rivers, were seriously polluted.

"The impact of human activities on the Yangtze water ecology is largely irreversible," Yang Guishan, a researcher of the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and one of the chief editors of the report, told Xinhua. "It's a pressing job to regulate such activities in all the Yangtze drainage areas and promote harmonious development of man and nature."

China's environment has suffered for years as the country has chased rapid economic growth, with little official attention given until recently to the threats of unfettered growth to the nation's air, water and soil.

EDIT

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/41390/story.htm

[aquart]

1. Is that water irrigating their crops?

This happened to the Soviet Union: so desperate to industrialize, they ignored all the damage they were doing.

But I want the origin of every ingredient in my food LABELED now.

[Rydz777]

2. Disaster

China is an increasing ecological and environmental disaster. "Always low prices" comes at a cost.

[madrchsod]

3. russia`s destruction of the aral sea

[Morgana LaFey]

7. I don't know what I'm looking at there -- care to provide some

captions?

[madrchsod]

8. these photos are from wikipedia

http://enrin.grida.no/aral/aralsea/english/arsea/arsea.htm
Aral Sea - Aral Sea

http://www.worldlakes.org/lakedetails.asp?lakeid=9219
LakeNet - Lakes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea
Aral Sea - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[kestrel91316]

4. Time to stop buying ANY foods imported from China, IMHO.

[hogwyld]

5. What's even worse

Is that not only are they irrigating their crops with this water, they are eating the floating fish, and drinking this water. The air is so polluted, that I couldn't see more than about 200 yards down the street.

[MLFerrell]

6. We had a similar situation here in the U.S. in our early industrial era.

I grew up on the Ohio River, and from what older family members tell me, it once was so polluted that you could see chemical slicks floating on the surface.

As the Chinese infrastructure develops, this kind of damage is inevitable, but hardly irreversible. Give them fifty or seventy-five years, and they'll have cleaned up their environment much as we did during the latter quarter of the twentieth century. Hell, if * hadn't stolen two elections and destroyed a quarter-century of progress, our environment might have been largely restored to health.

[hatrack]

9. They don't have fifty or seventy-five years

Not even close.