Lake cleanup pays off big with tourist dividends(2)

Aside from setting a buffer zone for the lake, local government has also managed to collect and treat all the domestic garbage in the 16 towns and villages surrounding the lake so that the water quality can stay high even during flood season.

Almost 1,000 people are hired as cleaners and are responsible for collecting trash along the lake and within their villages.

Yang Jianhua, 51, is one of the cleaners. Earning more than 7,000 yuan ($1,100) a year by patrolling 1 km along the lake three times a day, looking for trash left by tourists and villagers, she sees the job as a perfect chance to earn some extra cash when she is too old for physical work in the fields.

Though quite costly, hiring the cleaners is still relatively easy for local government officials compared with trying to promote centralized waste collection and processing in villages, as they did about 10 years ago.

Yang Hong, head of Xinyi village committee in Yinqiao town close to Erhai Lake, said the villagers used to dump domestic waste at a nearby lot overgrown with weeds, which emitted unpleasant smells.

He said the village committee came up with a plan to collect and process the waste as early as 2003, but it was delayed because some villagers did not buy into the idea that one needs to pay money to dump waste.

When the situation reached the media in 2006, the committee became determined to carry out the plan.

The cost is about 10 yuan per person every year for a large truck to collect all the garbage in the village and take it to the town for further treatment every week.

At first, the villagers only needed to pay three yuan each, with the rest subsidized by the town government. The standard has since been raised to five yuan.

"Many villagers didn't want to pay a penny at first. There were even conflicts when we tried to persuade them," said Yang Hong. "But they all understand now, and will even voluntarily monitor the collector, calling the hotline to complain if he ever comes late."

He said it only took about three months before other nearby villages saw the effects and carried out similar projects.

Yang Yu, head of Eryuan county government, said residents in the county have sacrificed a lot economically.

He said the estimated loss from simply restricting the planting of garlic, which is more expensive in the market yet requires a lot of chemical fertilizers to grow, is about 150 million yuan a year.

The loss of many industrial projects may be even bigger.

"Maintaining the ecological environment is also very expensive."

He said the government invested 30 million yuan for ecological construction in 2010, and is under great pressure to get more money as the cost continues to rise year by year.

"The idea that protecting Erhai Lake always comes first when it collides with economic growth will never change, as we see it as a responsibility," said Yang Yu. "But we do hope that there could be a system for compensation in the long run."