For years, Song Jianlin, a poplar grower in Yantai city's Muping district in Shandong Province, has been reporting to authorities the pollution problems of the Shandong Humon Smelting Company.
The listed company, as introduced in its IPO prospectus, has seven gold mines located in the Muping district, which has seen increased rates of gastric and colorectal cancer in recent years according to a local hospital report.
Song finally saw some hope last month when the Ministry of Environmental Protection announced to suspend the environmental inspection for Shandong Humon, a routine check for listed companies, and instead asked the company to rectify their problems because its Shangzhuche gold mine violated the Law of the People's Republic of China on Prevention and Control of Water Pollution for operating in a Tier II drinking water protection area.
Villagers from the nearby Hanjiakuang village in the Muping district, where the mine water flows, have complained about the "yellowing" and "strange smell" of their wellwater, and many have linked the groundwater to the high rate of gastric and lung cancer cases in their village, according to a National Business Daily report.
However, the concern over water pollution hasn't been limited to the Muping district.
"In the process of industrialized development, China is now facing the increasingly deteriorating quality of groundwater after so many years of soil infiltration by city sewage, household garbage, industrial wastes, fertilizer and pesticides," Yang Haizhen, an environmental science professor at Tongji University, told the Global Times.
Last Friday, the Chinese ministries for environmental protection, land and resources, and water resources, jointly released the National Plan on Groundwater Pollution Control for 2011 to 2020, the first for the country.
A total of 34.66 billion yuan ($5.46 billion) will be invested in three major tasks, including investigation and assessment, underwater pollution prevention, and pilot remediation, according to the plan.
Healthy standards
A survey conducted in 2009 on 641 wells in Beijing, Shanghai, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, and in the provinces of Liaoning, Jilin, Jiangsu, Guangdong and Hainan, showed that only 26.2 percent of the wells met the criteria for Class 3 water quality standards, while the rest of the 73.8 percent were all classified as a Class 4 or 5, according to Tao Qingfa, an official with the Ministry of Land and Resources who was at the conference.
He also mentioned that 37 percent of the Chinese areas with shallow groundwater resources are below the criteria required to meet a Class 3 water standard.
In China, under the national water quality standards (GB/T 14848-93)， groundwater is classified into five categories based on the minimum requirements for drinking, industrial and agricultural water. Class 1 to 3 is for drinking; Class 4 can be used as drinking water after undergoing treatment; and Class 5 is not suitable for drinking.
Over the past decades, China's usage of groundwater increased from 57 billion cubic meters in the 1970s to 109.8 billion cubic meters in 2009, accounting for 18 percent of the total water supply. In northern regions, 65 percent of domestic water, 50 percent of industrial water, and 33 percent of agricultural irrigation water comes from groundwater. Also, more than 60 percent of 655 cities nationwide are using groundwater as a source for drinking water, according to the officials at the conference.
Zhao Hualin, director of the pollution control division of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, said at the press conference that although the government has a general understanding of groundwater quality in some key regions, a systematic investigation into the nationwide groundwater environment is needed to better assess the status of groundwater quality and pollution. Therefore, obtaining the basic information about groundwater pollution will be one of the priorities in the coming five years, according to the plan.
Future improvements
Besides the nationwide information collection, the plan urges a series of measures to curb future pollution and carry out remediation projects for contaminated areas, such as introducing advanced international experience, setting up technical standards and guidelines, and fostering industries involved in water treatment.
Although the national plan is regarded as the country's first guideline document in the field of groundwater pollution control, experts still pointed out that the implementation is the key factor determining the actual impact of the new guidelines.
"In fact, there are several Chinese laws and regulations related to groundwater pollution, which put forward specific requirements and standards on things like disposal of industrial wastes and soil contamination," Yang said, "but unfortunately, many enterprises failed to perform these requirements well because waste disposal is expensive."
He mentioned that a common mistake some places or factories, with little concept of environmental protection, used to make, was directly burying garbage and waste in the ground, often causing long-term groundwater contamination.
Also, he added it is expensive to remedy a groundwater pollution site as many wells need to be drilled to determine the direction of groundwater flow during the process. Thereby, 34.66 billion yuan may only be enough to support several key projects.
Top: Groundwater in Liudong village, Hebei Province, turned yellow because of the pollution as shown in this file photo. Now local villagers can only use their natural water to do laundry. Photos: CFP
