Killer pollution turns Bohai into northeast's 'dead sea'
10/3/2006 10:30
Pollution is killing the Bohai Sea, turning it into a dead one, and
political advisers are urging the government to save what once was called a
"park of the ocean."
Industrial bases and cities along the sea are
dumping pollutants into Bohai, while they harvested "gold" in profits from rapid
economic growth, said Liu Quanfang, a member of the National Committee of
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
The northern sea,
covering 78,000 square kilometers, has 26 cities and about 100 ports along its
3,784-kilometers coastline.
More than 40 rivers including the Yellow
River, China's second longest, flow into the Bohai Sea.
However, "almost
no river that flows into Bohai is clean," and it will become a dead sea in a
matter of a dozen years if effective measures are not taken to curb pollution,
said the adviser from Liaoning Province.
The rim of Bohai Sea, which
includes Shandong, Hebei and Liaoning provinces, and port city Tianjin, expects
robust economic growth. It will be enhanced by the development of Tianjin's new
coastal area, included in the draft five-year plan of national development for
2006 to 2010.
Tianjin's new coastal area will be an engine for further
development of the Bohai rim and the country's north.
From 1990 to 2004,
83 red tides were reported in the bay of the Bohai Sea, and more than 80 percent
of the pollutants in the sea came from the continent. About 2.8 billion tons of
contaminated water is dumped into the Bohai Sea every year, Liu said.
Once Bohai "dies," Liu warned, it cannot revive for two centuries, even
if it does not receive a single drop of contaminated water from rivers and
continues to exchange water with other seas.
According to the Ministry
of Agriculture and the State Environmental Protection Administration, Bohai has
become one of the worst polluted sea waters. The content of heavy metal in sea
bottom mud is 2,000 times the national safety standard.
"Pollution has
caused extinctive damage to marine life. No large number of any fish, crab and
shell-covered animals can be spotted, and the whole spawning area is polluted,"
said the adviser.
Some fish species are losing their reproductive
capacity, and their extinction will be inevitable if the pollution continues.
Xinhua news
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