Cold comfort for villagers as incinerator for city scrapped

Guangzhou's decision to scrap the plan to build a rubbish incinerator near a smart residential district in Panyu has been widely hailed as a victory for people power, and rekindled debates over such projects. But for people living in nearby Yongxing village, it is too little, too late.

Chen Aidi has cancer of the throat. Her neighbour, Fan Tianzai , has lung cancer. Each day, the two farmers sit in Chen's courtyard home in the village playing cards, just 400 metres from the hulking mass of steel that they believe caused their illness - an existing trash incinerator, at Likeng.

Chen, 50, and Fan, 62, are among 72 people in the village who have developed cancer in the four years since the 700-million-yuan (HK$795 million) incinerator was built. Almost all have cancer of the throat or the lungs. According to the village committee, between 1993 and 2005, just two of the village's approximately 7,000 population got respiratory cancer.

Despite government insistence that incinerators are safe, middle-class residents in Panyu were prepared to take no chances when it was announced an incinerator twice the size was to be built near them.

Hundreds of angry property owners concerned about health - and declining real estate prices - took to the streets to protest against the project. A number were reporters and editors from outspoken The Southern Metropolis News, which produced a front-page investigation about the impact of the Likeng incinerator. On Sunday, officials in Panyu announced that the plan for the new incinerator would be scrapped.

In Yongxing village, the events were watched with resignation.