Beijing Turns Cleaner with Gentle Breeze

People in Beijing can feel the spring breeze gentler now, dust in the air less and less and waters much cleaner as compared with that a few years ago.

Monitor indicates the sandstorms, dust-spouts and gales are now bidding farewell to Beijing. News from State Forestry Administration says: since a greenery project was launched in Beijing, Tianjin and the surrounding areas in 1986, around 2 million hectares of trees and grass have been planted and cultivated, thus forming a protection forest system featuring belts, networks, patches or plots of arbors, shrubs and grass of various kinds.

Since the project was launched, wind speed in spring and winter in Beijing has been decreased by 40 %, sandstorms reduced by 34%, dust falling dropped by 18%, suspended granules in the air fell by 12%, and the situation when Beijing used to be besieged by sandstorms has been greatly alleviated.

Ecological environment in Tianjin has also taken a turn for the better. Days of sandstorms, dust- spouts and gales have been reduced respectively from 20.7, 12.5 and 38.6 days to 2, 1.8 and 13 days as against those in the early days of the project.

The average wind speed in the project area of Hebei Province decreased by 21% to 25%, and windy days by 26.1 % to 42.4 %, while air humidity increased 10%. The worse situation in which wind and sandstorms ran wild has now basically gone forever.

In the project area 1.2 million hectare of farmland and 0.2 million hectare of pastures are under the protection of the forest network. It has played a very important role in barring the wind and protecting the water source. The loss of water and soil erosion in the forestry area of Beijing Miyun Reservoir have seen a drastic reduction of 83%, the empty of sand-containing water into the reservoir dropped by 60%. The silted sand and mud in Guanting Reservoir fell from 8.99 million to 2.35 million tons.

The greenery project covers some 76 counties (towns and districts) Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei with a total area of 13.4 million hectares, and by the end of 2005, the total investment will reach 3.75 billion yuan, yielding a tree-planted and grass-growing area of 3.746 million hectares.

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