Farming Cited as Worst Water Polluter

(Caixin Online) A nationwide survey of pollution sources recently unveiled by the Ministry of Environment challenges the conventional belief that manufacturers are China's most serious polluters. Instead, the survey shows farming is responsible for much of the chemical oxygen demand as well as excessive nitrogen and phosphate pollution that taints the nation's waterways. The survey's authors mapped out rivers and lakes clogged with the heaviest pollution.

Concerning air pollution, the first-of-its-kind survey identified autos as the source for 30 percent of the country's NOx emissions. Survey data was collected in 2007 and analyzed before being submitted to the State Council for approval in 2009. Officials say all the facts and figures collected for the survey over a two-year period will be available to the public by the end of this year.

Saving energy and cutting airborne emissions are squarely at the top of China's national agenda for 2010. According to the 11th Five Year Plan, per-unit GDP energy consumption must be cut to 20 percent of 2005 levels, while COD and sulfur dioxide emissions are to be slashed 10 percent each.

A similar emissions goal spelled out in the 10th Five Year Plan for the period 2001-'05 called for 10 percent reductions in COD and sulfur dioxide. But the project was scaled back to a disappointing 2 percent decrease in COD, and a shocking 27 percent increase in sulfur dioxide emissions.

(Translated by LX)