Toxic Algae Choking Another Major Chinese Lake
Pastor Dale Morgan
Toxic Algae Choking Another Major Chinese Lake*
Beijing (AFP) June 25, 2007
A massive algae bloom has spread out over another of China's big lakes,
a press report said Monday, despite hundreds of millions of dollars
being spent on years of clean up efforts. "In recent days, due to the
hot and humid weather, a large amount of algae has bloomed in Dianchi
Lake, turning the water as green as paint in a stretch along the shore
near Kunming city," the Oriental Daily reported.
"Wave after wave of rolling green lake water laps up on the shore giving
off an awful stench."
Dianchi, in southwest China's Yunnan province, is the country's sixth
largest freshwater lake. It has suffered from severe pollution since the
early 1990s and is plagued by algae blooms each summer, the paper said.
The bloom comes after algae choked Taihu and Chaohu lakes, China's third
and fifth largest freshwater lakes respectively, in late May and early
June, underscoring the state of China's degraded water system.
More than 70 percent of China's waterways and 90 percent of its
underground water are contaminated by pollution, according to the State
Environmental Protection Administration.
The Taihu scare affected tap water for millions of nearby residents
although the poor state of Dianchi means people do not rely on it for
drinking supplies.
The algae bloom at Dianchi comes despite about 464 million dollars
having been spent to clean it up from the early 1990s to 2003, according
to a 2006 report from the government's China Research Academy of
Environmental Sciences.
About 175 million dollars of these funds were from World Bank loans, it
said.
A report by the US embassy in China said that more than two billion
dollars had been spent on cleaning up the lake.
Source: Agence France-Presse