water pollution: China public crisis
despite numerous exposures and cross-examinations, water pollution in China has not been effectively eradicated and contained. According to the latest inspection results of the environmental protection special action of eight ministries and commissions in the State Council in 2118, the water quality compliance rate of drinking water sources in 113 key monitoring cities in China is still low, of which 159 are up to standard, accounting for 65%, and 84 are not up to standard, accounting for 35%, involving 41 cities in 16 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government. As a serious public crisis, water pollution is challenging the decision-making level and ability of China government with extraordinary weight.
Black "water map"
From benzene leakage in Songhua River to cadmium pollution in Beijiang River in Guangdong Province, from the rampant growth of water hyacinth in Dianchi Lake to the flooding of cyanobacteria in Taihu Lake, although the ruthless facts one after another are constantly challenging China's already fragile water environment capacity, these partial and fragmented phenomena do not make us fully aware of the seriousness and cruelty of water pollution. Only by opening the plane map of China water system can the water pollution ecology, which is almost on the verge of crisis, be exposed.
according to the investigation of the state environmental protection administration, since the Songhua river incident two years ago, there have been more than 141 water pollution accidents in China, and an average water-related pollution accident has occurred every two or three days. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Supervision, in recent years, there have been more than 1,711 water pollution accidents in China every year.
"The water in the surging waves is clear, which can satisfy me." Qu Yuan's romantic feelings are now more and more a historical memory and lament. According to the Bulletin on Environmental Status of China issued by the State Environmental Protection Administration, nearly 41% of the rivers in China have been seriously polluted by water quality assessment of nearly 141,111 kilometers. Among the seven major river systems in China, 41% are inferior to Grade V water quality. Another important survey released by the Environmental Protection Administration shows that among the 131 rivers flowing through cities in China, 36 are seriously polluted, 21 are heavily polluted and 38 are moderately polluted.
As an important water source in northern China, the fact that the Yellow River has been polluted in recent ten years has been increasing. The Yellow River Basin Water Resources Protection Bureau made a quantitative analysis of the water pollution situation of the Yellow River, and found that the water quality of nearly 41% of the Yellow River reach was Grade V, which basically lost its water function. Just like the Yellow River, the polluted area of the Yangtze River is also expanding. According to a recent survey, 61% of the main stream of the Yangtze River has been polluted, and the section exceeding Class III water has reached 38%, which is 21.5% higher than that eight years ago. Coincidentally, although the Huaihe River is the largest river in China with the largest investment and the earliest pollution control, it is still the most polluted river. Of the 2,111 kilometers of Huaihe River assessed, 78.7% did not meet the drinking water standard, 79.7% did not meet the fishery water standard, and 32% did not meet the irrigation water standard. 11 years ago, there were more than 61 kinds of fish resources growing in the Huaihe River, but now these fish are almost extinct.
In addition to the extensive pollution of cross-regional rivers, local small and medium-sized rivers and the so-called urban "Longxugou" are all doomed to be polluted. Suzhou River in Shanghai has been "black" for 81 years, but in Guangzhou, where the author lives, 14 rivers, large and small, which pass through the urban area and flow into the Pearl River, are all black and smelly without exception.
when a river is invaded by pollution, it is difficult for a lake to be immune to it. According to the environmental quality report issued by the State Environmental Protection Administration, the water pollution in China's "three lakes" (Dianchi Lake, Chaohu Lake and Taihu Lake) is increasing day by day; Wuhan City, Hubei Province, which has the reputation of "a province of thousands of lakes", the pollution load of 38 lakes covering the urban area far exceeds its water environment capacity, and the water quality of 32 lakes is inferior to V. As one of the two major lakes in Yunnan Province that have not been polluted before, the water quality of Fuxian Lake is also beginning to drop sharply.
The rivers and lakes with the ocean as their destination also bring pollution to the recipients. According to the investigation results of Guangzhou Marine Geological Survey, 95% of the seawater in the Pearl River Estuary is seriously polluted. Coincidentally, the East China Sea, once a rich "sea granary" in China, has frequent red tides from April to June every year. Experts pointed out that the "last line of defense" of China's water pollution has been ruthlessly torn as a result of the concentration of pollution from rivers to the coast.
Turbulent pollution sources
Just as we have no doubt about the harsh facts of water pollution, the understanding of several "initiators" of water pollution at all levels of China society is becoming clearer and clearer.
Unreasonable industrial structure and extensive growth mode are chronic diseases that China's economy has not been cured for a long time. Its important feature is the rapid growth of heavy chemical industry, especially resource-consuming industry. The crux of the problem is that due to the influence of industrial layout factors such as water resources and shipping, the layout of heavy chemical industry along the river or along the river has become a paradigm. According to statistics, among the more than 21,111 petrochemical enterprises in China, there are more than 13,111 petrochemical enterprises located along the Yangtze River and the Yellow River. As for projects such as small paper making and small leather, it is even more common to start a big stove in water-sensitive areas. The most serious consequence of this industrial layout is that a large amount of sewage may be poured into rivers without treatment. According to the investigation and statistics of the State Environmental Protection Administration, at present, the industrial sewage discharge in China reaches more than 31 billion tons every year, especially the industrial sewage discharge carried by the seven major water systems is increasing day by day.
it has become an important feature of water pollution in China that non-point source pollution from agriculture exceeds industrial pollution. The research shows that rural non-point source pollution accounts for 31%-61% of all kinds of environmental pollution, and it has become the top priority of water pollution, in which the discharge of COD (oxygen content) in sewage has exceeded the total discharge of urban and industrial sources. On the one hand, the pollution caused by excessive use of chemical fertilizers is very alarming. If chemical fertilizer is applied to soil, only a small part of it is absorbed by crops, and most of it will either seep into underground to pollute groundwater or enter rivers, paddy fields and ponds with surface runoff under the action of rainwater. Because chemical fertilizer will cause eutrophication in water areas or the nitrate content in drinking water sources exceeds the standard, it has already endangered the "first invisible killer" of water quality.
another major force that agricultural pollution can harm water resources comes from the pollution of livestock and poultry and aquaculture. According to the survey data, the wastewater generated and discharged by raising a cow is more than that generated by 22 people's lives, and the wastewater generated by raising a pig is equivalent to that generated by 7 people's lives; The organic pollutants discharged by livestock farms in the suburbs of Beijing are equivalent to 2-3 times of the organic pollutants contained in industrial and agricultural production sewage and domestic wastewater in the city.
Just as agricultural pollution exceeds industrial pollution, another major pollution source-domestic sewage rushes out from every corner of urban and rural areas and is becoming more and more serious. It is understood that the amount of laundry sewage in China is nearly 2.2 billion tons a year, which is equivalent to 34 Ming Tombs reservoirs and 76 Kunming Lakes. In 2116, domestic sewage in Beijing and Shanghai alone reached 911 million tons and 1 billion tons respectively. The discharge of domestic sewage in large and small cities across the country has exceeded that of industrial sewage.
the crux of the problem lies in the fact that there are still 61% cities in China without sewage treatment plants. In cities where sewage treatment facilities have been built, only 51% can operate normally; In addition, due to the sewage collection pipe network, the treatment capacity of the sewage treatment plant is less than 21% of the designed treatment capacity. In the vast rural areas, domestic sewage treatment facilities are basically zero. It is precisely because of the low sewage treatment rate and the low level of reclaimed water reuse that a large amount of pollution load enters rivers and lakes like floodwater, and the environmental quality of China water body is pushed to the dangerous edge step by step.
itch of management system
From the perspective of economics, water resources belong to public products and should be included in the scope of government resource construction and management. In a word, the degree of protection and construction of water environment directly reflects and considers the management ability and strength of the government. From this perspective, it is not difficult for us to deeply see the imbalance and weakness of the public management system behind water pollution.
"Five Dragons Control Water, Nine Dragons Play in Water" is a vivid metaphor for China's water resources management model. At present, water conservancy, environmental protection, fishery, forestry, shipping, urban construction, geology and mineral resources are the main wading and water management in government departments. On the surface, this mechanism of "Jiulong Water Control" concentrates the strength of many departments, but in fact it cannot achieve the purpose of "uniting water control". On the contrary, it objectively strengthens the local interests and single goal of functional departments, and then weakens the macro-management function of water resources.
An important feature of China's water pollution prevention and control work is the implementation of local responsibility system, which may be worthy of our deep thinking and correction. The pursuit and worship of GDP has become the inertia thinking of local governments in China, and the government, as an "economic man", will certainly choose the former without thinking when choosing between two completely different development views: pragmatism and ecologism. The reason is very simple. The latter not only needs to pay the huge cost of pollution control, but also pays the cost of economic benefits sold for pollution control. As a result, those small chemical, paper and leather enterprises that should have been completely closed have come back from the dead and haunted; Taking the river along the Yangtze River as the habitat of industrial enterprises to boost GDP has become the same idea and action of local governments.
Ignoring, encouraging and even protecting water pollution is a major public hazard left by local governments. The research of China Water Pollution Map Network, a non-governmental environmental protection organization in China, found that not only many well-known domestic enterprises have become major water pollution households, but also more than 31 multinational companies operating in China, including Panasonic and Pepsi, frequently violate China's water pollution control laws and regulations, and more than half of the latter are concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta region. However, to this day, these polluters have not only failed to get due punishment, but also continued their own pollution behavior.
Managing water according to law is a common practice all over the world, but even this seemingly toughest measure has been repeatedly discounted in China. According to the provisions of the Environmental Protection Law, environmental law enforcement agencies can impose administrative fines of different amounts on any pollution project, but this kind of punishment can only be regarded as nine Niu Yi cents. Someone has calculated an account. The treatment cost of each ton of wastewater in high-polluting enterprises is generally 1.2-1.8 yuan, and the daily net income of illegal discharge can often reach several hundred thousand yuan, while the maximum fine limit of the environmental protection department is only one million yuan. This comparative income drives many enterprises to admit punishment rather than pollution control.
The dispersion of management and the softening of the system have led to the fact that the China government has made little progress in the treatment of water pollution even though it has invested huge costs. The National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) mentioned in an environmental law enforcement inspection report that China's water pollution control projects are progressing slowly, and the pollution control tasks of key river basins during the Tenth Five-Year Plan period have not been completely completed. In fact, the seriousness of the problem lies not only in the slow progress of water pollution control, but also in the rapid spread of new water pollution, and the deterioration trend of water environment has not been substantially controlled.
High price
Wang Anshi, a great reformer in the Northern Song Dynasty, said, "The nature of water is good for all things, and all things are born of water." However, in the face of an increasingly "black" water environment in China, it is difficult for us to find any optimistic feeling of consolation.
Water pollution directly harms people's drinking water safety. At the same time as the cruel fact revealed by the State Environmental Protection Administration that the cities with substandard surface water resources accounted for 34% of the detection target, the Ministry of Water Resources also revealed a set of shocking figures: at present, there are 321 million rural people in China who can't drink drinking water that meets the standard, of which about 63 million people drink high-fluorine water, 2 million people drink high-arsenic water, 38 million people drink brackish water, and 91 million people drink water with harmful substances exceeding the standard.
From water source to drinking water to food, the "vicious chain" formed by water pollution has become the "culprit" endangering people's health and life safety. According to authoritative data, about 2 million people in China get sick every year because of drinking water with high arsenic content, and about 21 million people in rural areas suffer from endemic dental fluorosis and skeletal fluorosis because of drinking water with excessive fluoride. At the same time, experts pointed out that the frequent occurrence of "cancer villages" in Shexian, Hebei, shenqiu county, Beichen, Shaanxi, Funing, Jiangsu and wengyuan county, Guangdong is highly related to drinking water pollution.
burns to the economy are undoubtedly the biggest consequence of water pollution. The Research Report on Green National Economic Accounting in China jointly issued by the State Environmental Protection Administration and the National Bureau of Statistics shows that in 2118, the economic losses caused by environmental pollution, including water pollution, were more than 511 billion yuan, accounting for about 4% of GDP in that year.
Agriculture that depends on the weather and water has become a direct victim of water pollution. Take the Yellow River as an example. Because agriculture is a big water user on the Yellow River, accounting for 91% of the total water consumption of the Yellow River, the losses caused by water pollution in the Yellow River to agriculture are as high as 3.3 billion yuan per year. According to the bulletin on the environmental situation of Hebei Province, due to the lack of water resources, farmers in some areas used sewage for irrigation, which led to the pollution of more than 2,111 hectares of cultivated land in the province last year, resulting in a loss of more than 23,111 tons of agricultural products (11.14,1.11,1.11%).
We should also face up to the fact that the harm caused by water pollution has gone far beyond the scope of economy and health, and the secondary contradictions such as the increased burden on the masses and distrust of the government have become increasingly prominent. According to statistics, the National Letters and Calls Office receives an average of more than 61 letters from people who have disputes over water pollution every day. Not only that, frequent water pollution accidents have also caused disputes among regions, which has affected the construction of a harmonious society.
The cruel history of building an "anti-pollution wall"
has pushed the China government into the old road of "pollution first, then treatment", leaving us with the choice of reducing the old pollution to the minimum, and thoroughly controlling and eliminating the occurrence of new pollution. In this regard, the State Environmental Protection Administration pointed out that by the year 2111, the China government will invest 641 billion yuan in water treatment, accounting for 41% of the total investment in environmental protection. At the same time, the China Municipal Government has made a solemn commitment: by 2111, the sewage treatment rate of cities in China will be no less than 71%, and by 2121, the drinking water of urban and rural residents will be safe or basically safe.
the vision is undoubtedly pleasant and exciting. But the road to the future may not be smooth. According to the severe water pollution ecology in China, the author thinks that the prevention and control of water pollution should broaden the strategic thinking.
-scientifically plan the layout of key industries in the basin. It is necessary to coordinate the relationship between the upstream and downstream, the left and right banks in the industrial layout, and give full consideration to the treatment of pollution emissions by key polluting enterprises; In drinking water sources and upstream areas of major rivers, heavily polluting enterprises should be carefully laid out so as not to pose a threat to water use in the middle and lower reaches; It is necessary to establish a regional "pollution compensation mechanism". If the upstream development economy pollutes the downstream, it must compensate the downstream in some form; At the same time, the downstream area participates in the EIA work in the upstream area, and strictly implements the one-vote veto system, forming a mechanism and system for supervision from top to bottom.
-strengthen comprehensive management and coordination across regions and basins. Cross-regional and cross-basin comprehensive management is based on the ecological carrying capacity of the basin, breaking through the obstacles between regions and departments, and comprehensively considering the rational development and protection of natural resources in the basin. At the same time, according to the ecology