1,000 hotels and restaurants face year-long closure on famed Chinese lake in Yunnan
A major water pollution clean-up on Yunnan’s Erhai Lake will mean that many businesses will be closed for a year
More than 1,000 hotels and restaurants at a tourist area in southwest China’s Yunnan province face closure for a year amid a local government’s campaign to save water quality in the idyllic Erhai Lake.
Dali Bai Ethnic Autonomous Prefecture, where the lake is located, announced that a central preservation area of the lake had been set up and that and all restaurants and hotels were to close for 10 days from Saturday while certificates were checked. Hotels without complete sets of certificates will be shut until June next year, when new sewage pipes and a water treatment plant would be complete, the Chongqing Morning Post reported.
The second largest body of fresh water in Yunnan, Erhai Lake has become increasingly popular with city dwellers as a quiet getaway.
The prefectural government said the current waste treatment system could not keep pace with growing number of visitors and proliferation of restaurants and hotels. More household sewage was discharged directly in the lake, which suffered a blue algae attack in January.
A national quality survey found that pollution had increased more than 50 per cent since 2004. Although livestock and rural households still counted as the major source of pollution, waste from catering and hotels had increased the fastest.
Hotel and restaurant owners told the newspaper that there were nearly 2,000 establishments restaurants and hotels close to the lake, but only about 10 per cent had obtained the necessary permits because the government suspended approvals last year.