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Pollution in Major Lake Partly Under Control
Serious pollution in Taihu Lake, a major lake in east China, has been brought under preliminary control, a recent investigation by the State Administration of Environmental Protection (SAEP) shows.
A special team organized by the administration toured the lake areas in Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang and concluded that the water quality in parts of the lake has started improving.
Over the past five years, the three regions spent up to 12 billion yuan on pollution control projects.
A bundle of small paper mills in Jiangsu Province have been closed down and replaced by much larger mills, resulting in a 50- percent cut in sewage discharge and a 300-percent rise in economic returns.
A total of 30 sewage treatment plants have been put into use in the three regions over recent years, greatly reducing household sewage, a major source of pollution to the lake.
To cut agricultural pollution, more than 200 ecological model farms have been set up in the lake areas, while 57 pastures and six pig farms in the immediate vicinity of the lake have either reached the discharge standards or have been relocated.
About 120,000 ships and boats in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces have been installed with waste oil collectors, accounting for 80 percent of the total.
Local authorities have also banned the use of phosphorus-containing detergent, reducing phosphorus pollution to the lake by 16 percent.
However, Wang Jirong, deputy director of the SAEP, pointed out that the progress so far is only an initial achievement, and the overall situation is still very severe.
He listed slow progress in the construction of sewage treatment plants and other pollution control measures, the lack of legal frames and technologies to combat agricultural pollution and insufficient scientific research into the control of lake pollution as major existing issues.
The official called for a more comprehensive and thorough approach in future pollution control efforts that will stem problems from their roots and combine pollution control with local economic restructuring.
The compilation of a pollution control program at the Taihu Lake area for the 10th five-year plan period from 2001 and 2005 shall also be sped up, he added.
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