Waste water discharged by one of the largest paper mills in Hebei province flooded and destroyed a sizeable national forest, official media in Beijing reported - but the company has a different story.
It said the waste water provided vital moisture and nutrients to the trees, and without it the forest would not even have come to exist.
A secret sewage pipe more than seven kilometres long had channelled thousands of tonnes of waste water from Jiluan Paper, in Luan county, to the heart of a vast area of woodland on the east bank of the Luan River for more than five years, according to an investigative report by Qianlong.com, the internet news portal run by Beijing municipality's propaganda department.
The water had formed a lake with an area of more than a hectare, its waters black, smelly and foamy, the report said. Radiating from the lake were seepage ditches that had distributed the water to almost every corner of the wood. A chest-high stone tablet erected by the county government says the woods are part of a project funded by the central government to counter dust storms.
The water was as thick as soy sauce, the report said, and few trees could survive it. Within the ring of pollution, there was no sign of life, just a deathly silence. The entire forest of more than 8,000 hectares had been affected.
Cui Xin, administrative director of the company, called the report misleading, biased and sensationalist. Cui said the land used to be a wasteland. After years of drought and becoming denuded, all the topsoil had blown away and the exposed sands had become a source of dust storms that hit Beijing.
In 2002, the company reached a deal with the county government to plant trees on the wasteland, and as part of the agreement, the wood would be irrigated by semi-treated waste water discharged by the mill. They called it the Eco-Friendly Forest-Paper Integration Project.
