Pollution turns stretch of China's Yellow River red

dpa German Press Agency
Published: Monday October 23, 2006

Beijing- Pollution from an unknown source turned part of the Yellow River red and left a pungent odour in the major industrial city of Lanzhou, Chinese state media said on Monday. Water stained a deep purplish shade of red began pouring out of a sewage pipe into the river on Sunday afternoon and spread about 1 kilometre along the river, according to photographs and reports.

An environmental official and local residents speculated that the water may have been discharged from an area heating scheme, as the hot water is sometimes dyed to discourage people from syphoning it off for other purposes, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Thousands of area heating schemes in Chinese cities are emptied and maintained in October and early November, before the official date for central heating to begin operation on November 15.

The Lanzhou environmental protection bureau took samples of the red water for laboratory testing but had not released any results, the agency said.

The north-western city of Lanzhou is home to several large petrochemical plants and other heavy industrial firms, and it is reputedly one of China's most polluted cities.

But the agency quoted the environmental official as saying no chemical plants were located near the sewage pipe from which red water emerged.

Last month, the government said a serious chemical spill pollutes a Chinese river on average every two or three days.

China has more than 20,000 chemical plants along major rivers, including 10,000 along the Yangtze River and 4,000 along the Yellow River, the state environmental protection bureau said.

The most serious recent incident was a petrochemical spill in the Songhua River in north-eastern China, which shut down water supplies for hundreds of thousands of people last November.

Officials initially tried to hide the presence of the huge slick of benzene and other chemicals, which flowed along the Songhua into Russia.

© 2006 dpa German Press Agency