In the past decades, she has founded a business empire selling buttons in her hometown Wenzhou. In her face, one discerns a sharp blend of the mildness of an ordinary Chinese housewife and the sophistication of a persistent businesswoman forged by decades of commercial endeavors.Ĭhina's economic miracle started with her: she was the nation's first licensed private business vendor after the "Reform and Opening Up" policies were adopted 42 years ago. Punctilious and humble, 59-year-old Zhang Huamei is not the most arresting of characters at first glance. Data from all cities should be made public.Zhang was the nation's first licensed private business vendor after the "Reform and Opening Up" policies were adopted 42 years ago. China’s environment ministry announced that the 2017 water quality rankings will only be released for the 10 best and 10 worst performing cities. First, water pollution data must be made publicly available so that local governments can be held to account. The same vigilance is now needed to address water pollution. ![]() ![]() This attention was met with swift government action, including industrial emissions inspections and the introduction of more than 2000 air quality monitoring stations. Since 2011, when a particularly thick cloud of smog settled over northern China for days and triggered public outcry on the internet, air pollution awareness has swelled. There are clear parallels between efforts to address China’s water pollution problem and action to fix its infamously smoggy air. There have been reports of local authorities digging deeper wells to reach drinkable water, which has become harder to come by as 80% of groundwater from major river basins is “unsuitable for human contact”. In three provinces – Shanxi, Sichuan and Inner Mongolia – the water even got worse, with the amount of surface water “fit for human contact” falling by 1.4%, 6.3%, and 13.6% respectively.Īcross China, access to drinkable water is not just a quality of life issue, it’s about survival. After analysing 145 water quality data sets from 31 provinces, we found that nearly half of the country missed its targets for the period 2011-15. The problem is in many cases provinces simply failed to comply. For Shanghai that means ensuring there is “basically no surface water” that cannot serve at least some function by 2020. In 2015, the ministry ordered provinces to actually meet the water quality targets they set every five years. This is not for want of China’s Ministry of Environment stepping up efforts to address water pollution. This is water that has been ruled unusable for agricultural, industrial and even decorative purposes dumped into rivers and lakes. In 2015, 3.78bn cubic metres of untreated wastewater was discharged across China, including 1.98m cubic metres in Beijing alone. ![]() Despite some improvements in recent years, wastewater, water which has been used in the home, in a business or as part of an industrial process and may now contain hazardous materials, remains a major pollution source, particularly in urban centres. The nationwide standards for the treatment of sewage are also far from sufficient. The local government, however, took no action to regulate the company’s chemical waste disposal, and there was no monitoring system in place to track the transport of hazardous materials. A year later, seven people, including employees and contractors of Luliang Chemical Industry, were found guilty by the Qilin District Court of Qujing for illegally discharging chromium-contaminated waste. According to local residents, more than 140,000 tonnes of waste had already accumulated over 22 years. In 2011, reports emerged that said Luliang Chemical Industry in Yunnan province had disposed of 5,000 tonnes of chemical waste next to a river used as a drinking water source. One reason for this is that local governments have too often failed to crack down on polluting industries.
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