"Detoxing" China's Huai river

Green Anhui is an established non-governmental organization based in Hefei, and with projects also in Bengbu and Wuhu, in central China’s Anhui Province. The organization’s mission is to promote environmental protection in Anhui province with a particular focus on the Huai River, a major source of water for the region.

In early 2006, as a part of the Huai River Protection Project, a group of Green Anhui volunteers traversed the Huai River identifying sources of pollution. Near Bengbu City, in north central Anhui, they came across a section of the river that was so polluted the stagnant water was red and blue. The volunteers were quickly able to identify the sources of this pollution--three chemical factories located in Qiugang village that were discharging dirty waste-water directly into the river. The volunteers reported their finding to Green Anhui staff Long Haizheng and he returned to the village for an investigation.

Long began by talking to local villagers in Qiugang about their living condition, and people came pouring with grievances. There were complaints of bad odors and toxic waters that were presumed to be killing farmland and infecting livestock. Villagers had to cover their mouths when they passed by the river, and primary schools located nearby had students getting sick with nausea and nose bleeds. In a village of eighteen hundred people, more than 10 people in their prime years reportedly died from cancers or unidentified causes every year. Many villagers believed these deaths were in fact slow poisonings from the surrounding chemical factories. The villagers’ eagerness for attention and action inspired Long and Green Anhui to embark on a campaign that generated ripple effects far beyond what had imagined.

Bengbu is a port city on the Huai River and a major commercial center for Anhui province with double-digit GDP growth in 2007. When Green Anhui launched its Huai River Protection Project in 2003, water pollution in the region was already widespread. Anhui Province’s longest river, the Huai supports approximately 50 million people and countless industries. Its condition has worsened so dramatically over the years that people started calling it “the dead river”. In Bengbu, there was no organized voice to call for change; and this is where Green Anhui came into the picture.

Green Anhui brought their volunteers to the village and swept the place for information, photos and testimonies. They then pitched the story to journalists who had worked with them in the past. The story exposed three chemical factories, Jiucailuo Chemical Ltd, Haichuan Chemical Ltd and Zuguang Microchemical Ltd. They are the three largest chemical factories located in and around Qiugang Village, on the outskirts of Bengbu City. Of the three, Jiucailuo is the worst offender, with no waste treatment procedure at all. The other two companies have waste treatment facilities, but they are inadequate and well below Chinese Ministry of Environmental Affairs’ standards.

These three companies made the village literally unlivable by tainting the local water supply. Research done by Green Anhui found that the village’s drinking water had an excessive level of sediments and chemicals and that it was not suitable for consumption. With Green Anhui’s support in March of 2007, villagers submitted petitions to the local Environmental Protection Bureau and fingerprinted their names in red ink. As part of a writing assignment, forty students wrote letters to the EPB urging them to clean up the river.

Following this action by the villagers of Qiugang, several stories ran in the Xinan Evening News and on Xinhua Net on the incident. Meanwhile, the Bengbu Environmental Protection Bureau (EPB) went from denying any violations, to publically validating the villagers’ claims on television interviews. The EPB eventually sent investigators to conduct random inspections on the factories and confirmed that they were in violation of the law. Two factories were ordered to pay a fine of 100,000 RMB (15,000 USD), and one was told to reduce their waste. Unfortunately, the fine is a small price to pay for companies like Jiucailuo which has annual revenue of 6 billion dollars.

By the end of 2007, following the actions of the villagers and the flurry of press reports, the Qiugang Village incident garnered the attention of the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP). MEP ordered the three factories to shut down and clean up, but the order was ignored by the companies. At various points, MEP used the newly-enacted Green Credit Policy to suspend loans to these companies and the local government even cut off electricity in order to halt their operations. The EPB renewed an order that mandated these companies to shut down by December of 2008. However, an update from September 2008 on the Bengbu EPB website states that the agency has increased their monitoring of these factories and that the situation has improved.

It is still unclear whether or not these three polluters will in fact be shut down and forced to move by the end of the year. The community in Qiugang is not sure if their waterways and livelihoods will be restored. Green Anhui will continue to work on this campaign, supporting Qiugang and other communities impacted by pollution along China’s rivers.