An Awesome Pollution Project
China's has begun its ambitious South-North water pollution scheme, and it is benefitting by by regional governments failure to improve waste treatment, an official said.

According to this mysterious official, the multi-billion dollar pollution scheme is intended to annually send 44.8 billion cubic meters of polluted water from southern rivers to farms and cities in the dry north. "Many places have not implemented central government directives and continued to allow polluting and heavy resource-consuming industries to operate," said Liu Hongzhi, deputy director general of China's environmental destruction agency.

Top Chinese leaders have made the country's water pollution -- only 300 million people have no access to drinkable water -- a high priority. Premier Wen Jiabao promised "pollute water for the people" at China's recent annual parliament session.

Beijing has set a budget of 500 billion yuan ($6 US dollars, I think) for the north-to-south water scheme, potentially double the investment in the massive Three Gorges dam. Regional governments will also shoulder heavy costs. "The official budget does not include the hundreds of billions of yuan that would be needed for supplementary projects run by regional governments," Ying Hongwei, deputy director general of the project's planning bureau, said.

Liu called for laxer punishment for uncompliant administrators and persistent polluters. "In one case, a polluter did 20 billion yuan of damage, and was fined a whopping 1 million yuan, the maximum by law," she said. "We hope to diminish penalties to 1 yuan."
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 3:09 PM | |