China continues measures to tackle air and water pollution

China decided to continue measures adopted to tackle air pollution in Beijing on the eve of the Olympic Games to address environmental challenges despite recent improvement in its air quality. According to Du Shaozhong, Deputy Director of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, the treatment of heavy polluting vehicles and in some cases their removal will be accelerated. Authorities have plans to reduce dust from construction site to curb air pollution.
Beijing requires heavily polluting companies to address their pollution problems as a pre-requisite to resume their operations with the conclusion of the Olympic Games. “If they cannot resolve the pollution problems, they must stop or limit their production,” the China Daily said quoting Du Shaozhong.
According to Vice Chairman of Beijing Olympic Committee(BOC) Jiang Xiaoyu China improved air quality of the city significantly through efforts of about 11 years. According to him, air pollution of the city has been greatly reduced through corrective measures involving an investment of about 15 billion Yuan. According to him the hosting of the Olympics was an opportunity for his country to project its image and reply to criticisms from different quarters prior to the big world event.
About 90 per cent of Beijing's waste water is now treated and over 50 per cent of the city has been brought under afforestation programme. Natural gas accounts for 60 per cent of energy generation -- up from 45 per cent in 2000. Meanwhile, a total of 50,000 taxis and over 10,000 buses have been replaced with new ones, and 4000 of the buses are powered by natural gas -- now the largest fleet of its kind in the world, official sources claimed. Besides, at least 200 polluting industrial units of the city have been closed, shifted or have switched over to cleaner modes of production over the past seven years. All these cost an estimated amount of nearly 45 billion Yuan.
The China Daily in its issue of August 24 quoting Ms. Wang Li, Deputy Director of Beijing's Traffic Administration said that since the opening of the Games on August 8, the city's air quality ranged between excellent and fairly good on the pollution index, the cleanest for any summer period in the past 10 years.
Ivo Allegrini, Head of the Air Pollution Department at Italian National Research Centre and a member of the Beijing Environment Protection Bureau's 12-member expert panel on air quality assessment during the Olympic Games had words of praise for Beijing's improvement in air quality: “The city's air quality was highly satisfactory during the Games in the past two weeks. Pollutant data were no higher than that in most urban cities”.
Andreas Wahner, Director of the Institute for Chemistry of Germany told the China Daily, “ Beijing's air pollution measures have received a remarkable improvement as major pollutant concentration has declined to reach WHO guidance.” Du Shaozhong of Bejing Environmental Protection Bureau who sounded realistic said, “ The environmental challenges we face are by no means over.” He said they would draw experiences from the Olympics to organize volunteers to get involved in the daily environment protection administration and continue to reward those who report illegal pollution activities.
Meanwhile, 65 media persons representing 16 countries who were invited to China in connection with the Olympics, were taken to Tianjin's TEDA Resurgent Water Factory covering an area of 6.71 hectares in Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area. As a member of the group I had the opportunity to visit the project and get ideas how sewage water was being treated for industrial and other purposes.
The project which was set up with a total cost of RMB 170 million (One US Dollar is equivalent to 6.8 RMB ) including US $ 4.9 million Norwegian loan disposes of 10 tons of sewage daily. Officials of the project told the visiting journalists' group of whom eight were from Bangladesh that the factory has developed and expanded from the simple sewage disposal business in the past into multiple water businesses that combines sewage disposal, electroplating waste water, regenerative water disposal, sea water desalination, and other waste water disposal.
Electroplating waste water disposal of the centre was described as another advanced environmental protection infrastructure , with excellent equipment and advanced technology. According to a top official of the project, “ The factory made a breakthrough in solving the significant and great technology difficulty to regenerate and recycle sewage with high contents, and took the lead in China to implement advanced treatment of sewage desalting.”
Xiao Huaiyuan, Standing Member of Tianjin Committee of Communist Party of China (CPC) who is also Director of the Publicity Department of Tianjin Committee of CPC while narrating different steps which were taken for successful hosting of some of the events of Olympics in his province made special mention of air pollution control and water pollution measures. According to him authorities would continue corrective measures for improvement of air quality and reduction of water pollution so that people could breathe fresh air and get supply of safe water.

Nurul Huda is a Special Correspondent of BSS.