|
Forget idyllic country
settings with clear streams or the smell of daisies in the air. What
villagers have to put up with in Xiazhuang Village in Yixing City,
Jiangsu Province, are ink-colored rivers, garbage strewn everywhere, lawns
overgrown with weeds, and the foul odor of rotting food and
waste.
Several villages in
Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces resemble Xiazhuang, according to a Xinhua News Agency
report on August 30. Waste and garbage of every kind imaginable are
carelessly dumped in the open, posing a serious threat to people's health
and the environment.
In Shanglian Village, Wujiang
City, garbage is dumped into rivers at the village entrance. Several
chemical plants are located nearby. Even the drinking water plant is not
spared; trash is littered all around it.
"A dozen of young people in the
village have died from cancer," said 60-year-old villager Yu
Hailong.
The primary source of pollution
is from industrial companies, many of which have no proper waste discharge
system. Companies from outside the area also dump their waste in the
village.
"The rivers used to be clear,
but now they are polluted by the wastewater from scores of chemical plants
nearby," said a villager surnamed Pan from Xiazhuang.
Another source of pollution is
agricultural waste. Large quantities of crop stalks and animal feces are
dumped into rivers.
"There is a pig farm behind
this river. The excrement from several hundred pigs and wastewater are
directly discharged into the river. In summer, flies are buzzing about.
And the excrement and other garbage float when the river water rises
during the rainy season," said a villager surnamed Zhu from Sanyou
Village.
Agricultural chemicals
such as pesticides and fertilizers add to the pollution. An inspection of
five vegetable bases in south Jiangsu by the Nanjing Soil Research
Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) revealed that soil
pollution exceeded acceptable standards.
Statistics show that the per
capita output and composition of garbage in rural areas are
approaching those of urban areas. The quantity of agricultural solid
wastes far exceeds that of industrial solid wastes.
A considerable part of the
waste in rural areas is directly discharged into the environment without
proper treatment, causing serious water, soil and air
pollution.
Over the past 20 years,
chemical fertilizers have been used as a substitute to organic
fertilizers, such as human and animal excrement, in Jiangsu. This has put
the environment under the strain of both chemical fertilizer and excrement
pollution, according to Wu Tianma, an expert with Jiangsu Provincial
Environmental Protection Office.
Wu said that in the province,
less than 33.3 percent of 45 million tons of plant stalks are used as
fertilizer for the fields and less than 50 percent of the excrement of
domestic animals and fowls are recycled. Less than 10 percent of the
excrement of domestic animals and fowls produced by large-scale breeding
farms are decontaminated.
Higher economic returns have
prompted farmers to engage in industrial work or business. A lot of rural
labor have migrated to the cities, leaving fewer people to manage the
labor and time-consuming farm work, Liu Jiamo, deputy head of Sheyang
County in Jiangsu, said.
Liu said that some new
farming equipment and methods cannot transform plant stalks into
fertilizer for the fields. The stalks are either burned or simply thrown
into rivers.
Furthermore, liquefied
petroleum gas and coal have become commonly used as fuel in
Jiangsu's villages and less biological energy sources are used.
It is a serious situation in
Jiangsu and Zhejiang where little capital has been invested in
environmental protection infrastructures in the rural areas. Environment
protection officials are also in great
shortage. | 
