Fang Ziyun
Fellow, Yangtze Water Resources Protection Bureau
Wuhan, 430051 China
E-mail: sbjym@public.wh.hb.cn
Telephone:
86-27-84875845
Abstract: Through the investigation of the strategy and methodology for balancing water and social challenges in order to break the link between economic growth and environmental damages the author selects two cases study in the Yangtze Basin from practice. One is “Integrating The Developmental Strategies of Riverside Cities With Protection of Yangtze”, the other is “Protecting the Water Quality in the Three Gorges Reservoir”.
The Yangtze River is the largest river in China. It ranks third in the world. Its main stem has a total length of about 6,300km. Its drainage area (D.A) of 1.8 million square km is equal to about one fifth of the total for the country. The mean annual run-off is 450 billion cubic m at Yichang gaging station, and 914 billion cubic m at Datong station.
Its water quality, on the whole, is good or rather good, but the reaches along the industrialized city banks, the tributaries and the lakes of the basin have now been polluted heavily. The sources of pollution are from urban, industry, agriculture and moving sources of navigation, but now are mainly from industries and municipalities. The pattern of pollution in Yangtze is the occurrence of polluted belts along the banks of cities with 60-100 m in width. The polluted belts are all located downstream from the outlets of sources of pollution. Now the polluted belts are discontinuous in the longitudinal direction of the river. If further pollution should not be checked, the discontinuous polluted belts near the cities would connect into a continuous one.
The pollution of water in Yangtze basin has not been checked is due to:
(1) The population expanded dramatically. During the development of urbanization the environmental protection has not been laid as the focus of economic decision making, so that the water and social challenges could not be balanced.
(2) For management, much of industrial wastewater and the polluted discharge from cities did not meet the standard of emission. The actual river basin management didn’t fulfill.
(3) The regulations and laws were not completed yet. The funds invested were not enough.
(4) Actual public environmental awareness and self-consciousness on the risks of water pollution, soil erosion and the ecological damage are not so high.
The frame diagram(Fig.1) for
processing the formulation of sustainable development
Fig.1 Frame diagram Formulation of S.D strategy and its Environmental Protection
strategy for industry,
agriculture and city, as well as for a region or a river basin, a country, the
global area as shown in the left part of the diagram. The right part of the
diagram addresses the environmental protection strategy of the corresponding
parts. The whole diagram
shows the action and reaction of sustainable development to /from environmental
protection in order to make them as an integrated coordination.
(1) From temporal point of view: as one that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
(2) From spatial point of view: as one that meets the needs of specific region could not damage and weaken the ability of related regions to meet their own needs.
(3) From the relationship of human being with nature, it requires the two should be survived in harmonic manner.
Case study 1 —integrating the development strategies of riverside cities with protection of yangtze
4.1.1.1 Convert the superiority of the water resources of Yangtze into the superiority of economic development of the riverside cities is the major trend of history.
Abundant water resources and power supply as well as the facilities for navigation are the basic prerequisites for city economic development. Yangtze is supreme in all aspects, so it has many facilities for the development of riverside cities. Ordinary the development will give some adverse effects on environment and on Yangtze. Only by integrating the strategies of development of riverside cities and protection of Yangtze in a harmonic manner, it could break the link between economic growth and environmental damage.
4.1.1.2 The principles for development and water pollution control must adhere to the following as close as possible, namely:
(1) beneficial to the parts concerned, advantageous to the whole area and at least through mitigation, harmless to the other;
(2) advantageous to the present, beneficial to the coming period and harmless in the future;
(3) helpful in improving the living standards of human being and harmless to the equilibrium of ecosystems of the basin;
(4) select the quality objectives of the water environments in accordance with the designed functions of the water body and raise its standard(level) step by step with full consideration of our state condition and financial possibility;
(5) control the most polluted reaches, tributaries and sources in priority;
For fulfilling the above principles we have laid the emphasis on the following work:
(1) Applying comprehensive pollution control planning and the complex remedial biologic and engineering measure.
The main principle for river pollution control should be to restrict waste effluent to reduce the loading of pollutants and to exploit clear water source to increase the self-purifying(assimilative) capacity of the aquatic environment. In planning to rationally deal with the above two aspect and to coordinate regulation of the river reaches, the whole main stem of the river and the whole basin are very important.
(2) Control strictly the pollution sources coming from factories, mines, enterprises and village industries by:
economic use of water,
diminishing the waste water discharge,
controlling the emission of pollutants by quantity,
good planning and siting for the development of village industries.
(3) Take care of the main sources of pollution, and control polluted water from cities by the following measures:
Improving the drainage and sewer system and associated facilities, construction of concentrated sewage treatment plants by municipalities to treat mainly for domestic sewage or construction of a plant by a big factory to treat industrial polluted water and sewage, or construction of a plant by several factories jointly, choose suitable control techniques for each special locality, turn the waste in the polluted water into resources to be reused.
(4) Rationally site new industries and urban developments, preventing further pollution from new sources and regulating existing sources.
(5) Extend both industrial discharges and sewage outfalls into the middle of the river in certain reaches.
(6) Prevent soil erosion to reduce the turbidity and the organic content of the river.
(7) Control oil pollution and other pollutants from navigation.
According to Chinese Regulations, the outlets of industrial polluted effluent and domestic sewage discharges should not be located at a distance nearer than 1000m upstream and 100m downstream from the site of the inlet to a water supply. Ordinarily many alternatives for pollution control of the Yangtze along the shore are formulated among different distances (less than 1000m) downstream from polluted water outlets in order to restore the quality of the river, such as the 300m recovery plan, the 500m recovery plan, the 800m plan and 1000m recovery plan, etc. The shorter the recovery distance, the more expensive is the cost of the plan. The plans selected are different at different times. In general, at present the longer distance recovery plan is adopted, whereas in the future a smaller distance recovery plan will be selected. Of course, the fundamental principle would be to minimizing harmful fluxes from land to water in Yangtze finally.
(8) Main environmental problem of water of the existing riverside cities
Most industries locate at the suburban of the riverside cities along the Yangtze River.
Some of the existing riverside cities
have different kinds of environmental problems. Their environmental problems of
water are also different among cities, but most of them have the problems of
city flood control, pollution control of water environment, insufficient city
water supply during summer time and insufficient capacity of drainage system for
intensive storm water.
(9) In summary, Yangtze is the big support for the development of riverside cities, but it must be reminded that if we should pay attention only to economic development and disregard the protection of Yangtze, the big support would vanish at last and then the development would not go any further. So integrating the strategies for economic development and protection of Yangtze as well as the environment is urgent. To make development of riverside cities keeping pace with protection of Yangtze if necessary, and no doubt it could be obtained. The ultimate status of environment quality and the state of ecosystems of the cities and the basin are the indices for examining if the economic development strategies are correct or not.
Case study 2—protecting the water quality in the three gorges
reservoir
(1) The Three Gorges Project (TGP) is a key project in the development and harnessing of the Yangtze River. The dam site is situated in Sandouping of Yichang city, Hubei Province, with a distance of 40km upstream from Gezhouba dam. The TGP is a multipurpose hydro-project mainly for flood control, power generation, navigation and water supply improvement.
The main characteristic of Three Gorges reservoir is:
The relative volume of the reservoir is small and its regulation capacity for runoff is low. It’s a seasonal regulation reservoir.
The reservoir is of gorge type, with a length of 660km and an average width of 1.1km.
The operation program for reservoir regulation considers various requirements including the environmental aspect.
(2) Now the total wastewater and sewage discharged into Reservoir reach amounts to more than 1 billion ton, the living solid waste of non-agricultural people in Chongqing city amounts to 1.9 million ton, the industrial solid waste amounts to 8.3 million ton annually. They are the main sources of pollution to the future reservoir. Now the water quality of Yangtze, however, remains good in general due to huge quantity of stream flow, except for pollution belts along the banks near cities. After impoundment the slower flow velocity and higher water level cause by the TGP will aggravate shoreline pollution. Therefore, it would be necessary to strictly control the discharge of wastewater from surrounding factories, mines, towns and cities, to enforce treating the solid wastes and to be mitigated further by better wastewater and solid wastes treatment measure.
Moreover, the impact of inundation on resettlement and the environmental planning for the reservoir have been compiled. In order to protect the environment and to keep the water in the reservoir to be clear, the industries and third estates newly established should be carefully selected. Only those of no or less pollution would be allowed to build in the region.
The sustainable development planning in China is to treat the river basin as an ecosystem, as an integrated unit and to check the industrial pollution as its main aspect. First to arrange the plan of economic and social development and to investigate both water demand and pollution loading. If it is not satisfied feedback to the planning of basin or regional sustainable development for rearrangement is necessary in order to try to make the above five aspects keeping in harmonic manner by the frame diagram. For the existing industries, asking them to meet the standard of emission in a definite time by the new technology or by some severe control methods according to their conditions. Both are useful and efficient for balancing water and social challenges and could break the link between economic growth and environmental damage.