Green Options

Following last week’s post on contamination of the water supply for the city of Yancheng, China, state-run media Xinhua News has released an update on the news item.

According to a government circular cited in the Xinhua article, seven officials responsible for water supervision have been punished and two have been removed from office for lacking oversight. The Mayor of the city has pledged to close over 10% of the city’s [...]

Authorities from China’s coastal city of Yancheng, in the province of Jiangsu, shut off water last Friday and restricted the supply for most of the weekend following citizen reports of foul smelling water. An estimated one million of the city’s 1.5 million residents were left without water due to what government identified as the presence of two variants of carbolic acid – carcinogen hydroxybenzene and phenol — in the city’s water supply.

The local government identified Biaoxin Chemical Company as the party responsible for the tainted water, which illegally discharged the toxic chemicals from its facility, said state media Xinhua news agency. Xinhua also reported that the plant has been shut down and its top executives arrested. Officials have not provided any additional information; and state media China Daily reports that no one has come forward with symptoms of poisoning have not been independently confirmed.

Wildlife authorities are battling to get a hippo to leave the Cape Flats Sewage Plant and move back to the more natural environment of the Zeekoevlei Nature Reserve in which he was born.

While this is a lighthearted post, its worth noting that many believe the hippo and not the lion or the crocodile is the animal responsible for most human deaths in Africa.

The young four year old hippo left the reserve several days ago and moved into the sewage works at Zandvlei, where he has been resisting all attempts to send him home. Its not a simple matter to move a hippo which weighs 800 kg and spends most of the day in the water. Conservation workers have been erecting fences and gates to restrict his movements and guide him home.

Less than an hours drive from downtown Shanghai, Chinese conservationists have created a mile long wetland nature reserve in an area that, just three years ago, was littered with mountains of steel slag more than ten yards high.

In an amazing tribute to Chinese ingenuity, the Paotaiwan Wetland Park is now home to thriving populations of Egrets and Wild Water Bamboo, and has just been awarded the coveted China Habitat Environment Award.

“The 50-hectare wetland is a precious treasure for the ecosystem here,” says Yang Xin, president of the Shanghai Baoshan Greening Management Bureau. He calls wetland “the kidney of Earth,” a purifier and filter that protects water resources.