Twelve officials in Yuxi including vice mayor Chen Zhifeng were fired last week over the recent discovery of heavy arsenic pollution in Yangzonghai Lake, according to Chinese media reports. Another 14 officials from the provincial government were also sacked.

The majority of fired officials were from Yuxi and Yunnan's environmental protection and water departments. Yunnan Chengjiang Jinye Industrial and Trade has been fingered as the main polluter, but several other enterprises around the lake have also been connected to the arsenic pollution.

According to the Shanghai Daily:



The provincial government is estimating that it will take at least three years to reduce the lake's arsenic contamination to acceptable levels and is seeking international help to address the problem.

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Tags: arsenic, Chen Zhifeng, environment, pollution, Yangzonghai Lake

The Yunnan provincial government has announced that it will not only be searching around China but internationally as well as it scrambles to find firms capable of cleaning up arsenic-poisoned Yangzonghai Lake.

The "China Yunnan Yangzonghai Lake Water Pollution Reduction, Arsenic Removal and Water Quality Restoration" project is publicly inviting bids to clean up the lake via the Yunnan Provincial Scientific and Technological Development Research Institute, according to local media reports.

The main objective of the project will be to reduce the amount of arsenic in Yangzonghai's waters from the current 0.128 grams/liter to 0.050 grams/liter within a three-year period.

The discovery in June that Yangzonghai Lake, located 45 kilometers east of Kunming, had heavy arsenic levels has been followed by a banning on drinking the lake water, swimming in the lake and selling vegetables grown in the fertile lake basin. The 26,000 people who had been using lake water for drinking are now dependent upon government shipments of drinking water.

This year, eight companies in the Yangzonghai Lake area were found to be engaging in illegal polluting practices, with Yunnan Chengjiang Jinye Industrial and Trade Co Ltd (云南澄江锦业工贸有限公司) fingered as the main polluter.

The company failed to build the legally required treatment facility for its wastewater, with years of accumulated arsenic seeping into the local water table. It had been fined multiple times in the past, but the relatively small fines were viewed by the company as a cost of doing business, according to Kunming media reports.

Related article: Yangzonghai Lake suffering from heavy arsenic pollution

Tags: environment, pollution, water, Yangzonghai Lake

Kunming municipal officials intend to create a trial court which will only handle environment-related lawsuits, according to Chinese media reports.

Should the court be approved by the local government, it will handle criminal, civil and administration cases related to crimes against the environment. Defendants found guilty of such crimes will be "given severe punishments and must treat the areas they have polluted to clean them up," according to the reports.

The news comes shortly after reports of heavy arsenic contamination in Yangzonghai Lake. It is likely that a large percentage of the more than 26,000 people living around the lake had been ingesting arsenic-tainted water for years. Now the area is suffering a shortage of drinking water, with the government shipping in supplies (see image above).

Local officials in Kunming and the counties of Yiliang and Chengjiang are now engaged in finger-pointing and responsibility dodging, according to the website china.org.cn. According to reports:



As China Environmental Law Blog puts it:



Yangzonghai relief image: china.org.cn

Tags: Chengjiang, environment, law, pollution, Yangzonghai Lake, Yiliang

Despite being landlocked, Yunnan has plenty of water, including the headwaters of the Yangtze, Mekong and Salween Rivers. It is also home to nine large lakes, with Kunming's Dianchi Lake (滇池) the biggest of the group.

Dianchi Lake is also famous for being heavily polluted – to the point where its water is unfit for industrial use. Yunnan's polluted lake club has recently added a new member – Yangzonghai Lake (阳宗海) – which the provincial government announced has heavy levels of arsenic in its waters. Yangzonghai is now officially considered unfit for drinking, swimming in or fishing in.

The arsenic discovery came during a snap inspection of enterprises operating in the Yangzonghai basin 45 kilometers east of Kunming, with eight companies found to be engaging in illegal polluting practices. Yunnan Chengjiang Jinye Industrial and Trade Co Ltd (云南澄江锦业工贸有限公司) has been named as the main polluter.

The company allegedly failed to build the legally required treatment facility for its wastewater, with years of accumulated arsenic seeping into the local water table. Yunnan Communist Party Secretary Bai Enpei (白恩培) and Yunnan Governor Qin Guangrong (秦光荣) have pledged to take "decisive action" to remedy the situation.

As recently as 2002, Yangzonghai had been noted for having water clean enough for drinking and swimming – a stark contrast to the environmental devastation of nearby Dianchi Lake. In February of this year, Kunming Communist Party Secretary Qiu He (仇和) visited Yangzonghai, warning local enterprises that the lake must not become a "second Dianchi".

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Tags: arsenic, Bai Enpei, Dianchi Lake, environment, pollution, Qin Guangrong, Qiu He, water, Yangzonghai, Yunnan Chengjiang Jinye Industrial and Trade

Yunnan province announced plans this week to spend 30 billion yuan (US$4.29 billion) over the next three years addressing the pollution of Dianchi Lake, China's sixth-largest freshwater lake and the largest lake on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau.

Qin Guangrong, governor of Yunnan, described the cleanup work on Dianchi as 'top priority' for building a modern Kunming – which borders the lake on its northeast - according to a Xinhua report. Qin said the project consists of six sub-programs, including pollution interception along the 29 rivers that feed into the lake, plus "ecological protection, dredging, and others". Several wastewater treatment plants will also be built under the project.

Also part of the plan is a scheme to resettle approximately 30,000 lakeside residents in an attempt to restore wetlands in the area by 2010, the report said. Yunnan has spent billions of dollars on reducing pollution in the 300-square-kilometer lake with little to show for it in terms of results. China's major lakes, including Dianchi, Taihu and Chaohu, are suffering from algae blooms that are destroying the lake ecosystems by depleting the water's oxygen content. The central government aims to return the lakes to their 'original state' by 2030.

The announcement by Governor Qin follows recent commercial interest in cleaning up Dianchi. Last year Hong Kong-listed property developer Shui On Land announced that it intended to "thoroughly restore" Dianchi as part of its Caohai Urban North Shore project. The project will dedicate 87 hectares to a mix of high-, medium- and low-density housing and 29 hectares to cultural infrastructure including museums, theaters, an amphitheater and an "artist's community".

According to a Shui On press release, the plan involves a short-term strategy of creating a lake "cell" isolated from the rest of the lake and filling it with clean water. Once the lake has reached a level of recreational cleanliness, the lake cell and the lake will be combined.

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Vehicle exhaust is painting Kunming's blue skies gray

Kunming, which has an official population of 6.08 million, issued its 900,000th license plate for a motorized vehicle yesterday – another milestone in the rapid transformation of a city that had very few privately owned automobiles only 10 years ago.

To put the rate of change in perspective, it took 43 years of issuing license plates before Kunming issued its 100,000th license plate for a motorized vehicle in 1992. From 1992 to 1996 another 100,000 vehicles were registered. In the more than 11 years since then, the city has added another 700,000 vehicles to the road.

One statistic in particular is rather disarming: Kunming has added 100,000 motorized vehicles to its streets since the end of June 2007. That is roughly 560 vehicles each day. Private vehicle ownership has been a major force behind the increase in vehicles in Kunming, with private vehicles constituting 85 percent of the motorized vehicles in the city.

According to municipal statistics, there are currently 15 motorized vehicles for every 100 Kunming residents - or 45 motorized vehicles for every 100 three-person households. The rate of growth in the number of motorized vehicles in Kunming is currently 18.06 percent, nearly twice the national rate of 10.02 percent. If current trends hold steady, Kunming will have one million motorized vehicles by Olympics time.

Officials cited in a Kunming Daily report said that exhaust from motorized vehicles has emerged as the chief polluter of the city's air, adding carbon monoxide, particular matter and other pollutants into the city, which is enclosed by mountains on three sides. It is estimated that fuel totaling 11.45 billion yuan in value was consumed by motorized vehicles in Kunming last year.

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