China's Pearl River smells, but mayor vows to swim
By Simon Montlake (Christian Science Monitor )
Updated: 2006-05-06 09:24 The mayor of China's top manufacturing city is
hosting a "swimathon" this summer in the local Pearl River. Cleanup efforts to
reverse years of industrial pollution have been so successful, claims mayor
Guang Zhangming, that the Pearl is once again safe to swim. To prove it, he
plans to don a suit and join the 10,000 other swimmers whom he hopes will take
the plunge.
But after looking into the filmy water and smelling its foul
wafts, other officials are said to be begging off. Three vice-mayors told a
local newspaper that they couldn't swim.
After decades of rapid industrial growth, China has reached a moment akin to
America in the 1970s: Pollution has become too obvious to ignore, sprouting a
new environmental consciousness and official efforts to start cleaning up.
One of the early environmental campaigns is focusing on the Pearl, a
1,375-mile river which rises in the Tibetan foothills and empties into the South
China Sea. Around one-third of Chinese exports are manufactured on the Pearl
delta, exacting a steep environmental cost. Billions of dollars have been spent
on new sewage treatment plants and moving heavy industry out of major cities. As
a result, river quality has improved in cities like Guangzhou, where riverside
walkways are thronged with families and couples on bicycles.
But the river, like the rest of the country, still has a long way to go to
reach standards of air and water quality achieved in the West or other wealthy
Asian countries.
After a long day's work driving a truck, Mr. Huang leans back on a concrete
riverbank balustrade. Huang and his childhood friends recall spending much of
their youth playing by, and in, the river.
"I'm not brave enough to swim in the river now, not even if you paid me,"
says Huang, chuckling with his buddies.
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