Residents of
Zhaiwan village in Hubei province, where a cancer cluster has been
linked to the severe pollution of local rivers, have been promised
clean drinking water piped right into their homes by the end of this
month [March 2006].

Collecting water samples near Zhaiwan

As Three Gorges Probe reported
in January, the village, situated on a sub-tributary of the Yangtze
River about 100 kilometres below the Danjiangkou dam, has been the
focus of a campaign by a local environmental group, Green Han River.
Beijing-based journalist and environmental activist Wang Yongchen also
highlighted the case in a story
she wrote after visiting the region earlier this year. Now, the
government of Xiangfan municipality, which encompasses Zhaiwan, is
spending one million yuan (US$125,000) on a system of wells and pipes
designed to provide the 803 households in the village with safe water,
China Radio International (Zhongguo guoji guangbo diantai) reports. As
many as 108 people in the village of 3,530 have died from stomach,
colon and other cancers since 2001, CRI says, adding that many of those
who died had been young and able-bodied. After a decade of suffering,
the villagers’ plight caught the attention of high-level officials,
including Hubei party secretary Yu Zhengsheng, who instructed local
officials to act. Zhaiwan is situated on the Bai River, a sub-tributary
of the Han River, which is itself one of the largest Yangtze
tributaries. Villager Mu Yunsheng told a reporter that his family had
fished in the Bai for generations, hauling in as much as 50 kilos of
fish a day. Their catch began to decline in the mid-1990s, until by
2002 they had to abandon fishing altogether. Now they eke out a
livelihood weaving nets. Mr. Mu said the stench from the Bai is
unbearable in his home, which is close to the river, and that the odour
is still terrible five or six kilometres away. Given the severity of
the water and soil contamination in the river valley, the 150 engineers
and labourers working on Zhaiwan’s running-water project had a hard
time locating drinkable groundwater. They ended up drilling to a depth
of 120 metres, and bringing in clean earth from 50 kilometres away to
shore up the sides of the well. Drilling work has now been completed,
and tests on the water are being conducted, CRI reported. Many
villagers have been working as volunteer labourers at the site, eager
to do their bit to bring safe water to Zhaiwan, and end its suffering.
However, water-quality experts are worried that serious problems lie
ahead for villages such as Zhaiwan. Beginning in 2010, large amounts of
water are to be extracted from the Danjiangkou reservoir as part of the
south-north water diversion scheme aimed at supplying major cities in
the arid north, including Beijing and Tianjin. Scientists say siphoning
off a huge quantity of water from the reservoir is likely to cause
pollutants to become more concentrated and more dangerous in downstream
rivers, such as the Bai.