China to spend 2tn yuan cleaning water: Rivers heavily polluted with chemicals from factories

THE Chinese government plans to spend two trillion yuan (HK$2.5 trillion) to tackle water pollution in its rivers. The plan aims to improve the quality of China’s water sources by 30 to 50 percent through investments in technologies such as waste water treatment, recycling and advanced filtering technology. In China, groundwater resources are heavily polluted. Toxicchemicals are constantly released into rivers by the factories. According to government data, a 2012 survey of 5,000 groundwater checkpoints found 57.3 percent of samples to be heavily polluted. The environment ministry says that over the next five years, the government will need to spend a total of 60 billion yuan to set up treatment facilities, and a further 10 billion yuan on annual operations for tackling water pollution problems. China’s water problems are made worse by its reliance on coal and the lack of regulations in remote industrial zones. Official figures show China emits around 25 million tonnes of organicwaste and 2.45 million tonnes of ammonia nitrogen into the water each year. 1. groundwater (n) 地下水 2. toxic (adj) 有毒的 3. reliance (n) 依賴 4. remote (adj) 遙遠的 5. emit (v) 排放 6. organic (adj) 有機的