By Li Li, Su Hua

The society was shocked by the news that Huai River suffered the heaviest pollution in history not long ago, in the light of the facts that it was the first river on which China carried out integrated management in accordance with the law ten years ago, and the country's stress on managing the water pollution of "Three Rivers and Three Lakes' (Huai River, Hai River, Liao River, Taihu Lake, Chao Lake and Dianchi Lake) during the "Ninth Five-Year Plan Period" thus began.
 
Different remarks were sparkled on the effect of the ten years’pollution management on Huai River with the heavy investment and the large scale drawing attention from at home and abroad. This heaviest pollution in the making has again gathered attentions from all circles of the society onto the Huai River and the evaluation on the water pollution management of "Three Rivers and Three Lakes" as well as that in the whole country.

Water pollution is not only an issue on environmental protection, but also an issue concerning whether the sustainable development of social economy can be achieved and whether the scientific view of development can be established and implemented. What's more, it also counts for the fatal long-term stability of a country. Therefore, people have to pay keen attention to it. 

Take Huai River as an example. It reflects the situation of China's pollution management on big rivers and lakes. Over the ten years of pollution management on Huai River, the governments of the four provinces along the river have taken a series of measures, such as structural adjustment, industrial pollution prevention and control, daily sewage treatment plant constructions and agricultural area pollution management, with the support from the central government.

On the whole, the total amount of sewage discharge in the four provinces along the Huai River has dropped year by year while the economy has been increasing fast. From 1996 to 2003, the GDP of the whole basin has increased by 134 percent while the emission of the chemical oxygen demand (COD) of the main pollutants in water has been reduced by one third. To achieve this, the country has invested an accumulative total of nearly 19,300 million yuan to manage the pollution in Huai River. But the total pollutants left is still of a large quantity.

When it comes to the evaluation of the pollution management of Huai River, experts will turn to data, but citizens living along the Huai River will focus on the quality of water straight away. The dark yellow stenchy sewage stretching nearly 150 kilometers in Huai River has poisoned fish and shrimps to death, destroyed their dreams of getting rich, polluted the water source and left them heart-broken.

Generally speaking, China has made efforts to prevent and treat water pollution for ten years; but the result is still not fully up to expectations. The water quality of "the Three Rivers" basins has not taken an obviously favorable turn, and pollution accidents happen occasionally. In addition, the “Three Lakes” are still in eutrophication state with the blue green algae breaking out frequently.

The effect of the water pollution prevention and control that China has been energetically working on has been way far away from the goal of pollution management in the "Tenth-five Plan". Then where does the problem lie?

Relevant leaders from the Environment and Resource Protection Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) hold that there should be a transition in China's water pollution prevention and control. There should be a more scientific and more objective way to guide the prevention and control of water pollution.

In the light of the control experiences of water pollution abroad, both the pollution management of Lake Biwa in Japan and that of the Times River in Britain took several decades. However, China hopes to rely on a certain policies and measures to clean the polluted water within an extremely short time. The problem is that it hasn't taken into consideration the chronicity, complexity and arduousness of pollution control. Also, it hasn't fully considered the actual condition to adhere to a long-term managing mechanism.

Another example is that in dealing with the relationship between economic development and environmental protection, what China has said to do was inconsistent with what it actually has done.

Lotus Monosodium Glutamate Factory, the largest industrial pollution source of Huai River Basin, dared to discharge industrial sewage, even around the inspection visit of the leaders of the Environment and Resource Protection Committee of NPC to Zhoukou at the end of this March. Shut it down? Impossible! The factory occupied a great proportion of Zhoukou City's GDP--how would the local government be willing to throw this gold baby away?
  
Xia Qing, a scientist who used to be in charge of compiling and working out the prevention and treatment plan of the water pollution on the Huai River, said helplessly, "The country demanded to make the Huai water clean by 2000 at that time. So there was no alternative way but to take immediate actions to cure the symptoms before eliminating the root of the problem. But if it had been thinking twice and the work had been done step by step in accordance with the rules, the pollution management on Huai River should have been more fruitful."