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Untreated waste pouring into river that supplies Shanghai

Only 1 per cent of surface water in Shanghai remains a safe source for drinking as worsening pollution in  the Yangtze threatens water supplies to the most heavily populated regions of the country, according to Xinhua.

'Surface water sources in Shanghai that meet the national drinking water standards are reduced to 1 per cent, and 68.6 per cent of water supplies falls into Level Five, which means seriously polluted,' said Weng Lida , a senior researcher at the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission.

The water quality of the Yangtze, the 6,300km river that runs through 186 cities before emptying into the sea at Shanghai, is in a critical state, mainly due to the amount of waste water discharged into it every year.

Despite Beijing's calls for clean-up efforts, there is little sign of the pollution being brought under control. The amount of untreated waste water being discharged into the river continues to increase.

Last year 18.4 billion tonnes of polluted water were dumped in the river, up 7 billion tonnes from 1998, which means the river has absorbed an average of 1 billion extra tonnes of waste water every year for the past seven years, Xinhua said.

For Shanghai's 20 million residents, the situation could be even more critical because the river is the only source of drinking water in the commercial hub.

Dozens of other major cities, including Wuhan, Nanjing  and Chongqing, also rely on the Yangtze for drinking water.

Mr Weng said there was hardly any surface water that was safe to drink in Wuxi , a booming city in the Yangtze River Delta.

Industrial and residential waste and sewage, agricultural pollution and shipping discharge were to blame for the river's declining health, the expert said.

Anqing , a riverside city in central Anhui province , whose pillar industry is petrochemicals, has yet to build any facilities to treat waste water.

All residential waste water in the city is directly dumped into the Yangtze.

Overall, 85 per cent of residential waste water is pumped into the Yangtze River, which covers 19 provinces and is home to one-third of the country's population.

'Protecting water quality in the Yangtze is now imperative,' Mr Weng said.

'The major polluted stretches are located near cities along the river and its tributaries.'

The mainland is in the grip of an acute water shortage because of prolonged drought in many regions. Much of the water that remains has been contaminated by industrialisation. About 300 million people lack access to drinking water, according to  state media reports.

About two-thirds of  the 71.7 billion tonnes of waste water produced in the mainland last year drained into water systems without treatment. More than 90 per cent of rivers and lakes are polluted, according to a statement released yesterday by the Ministry of Water Resources.



Yangtze's water critically polluted and getting worse