China faces crucial five-year fight against water pollution

China made "many mistakes" in developing the economy at the cost of the environment, and the 10th Five-Year Plan 2001-2005 would be the "most important" period for environmental protection, said Qu Geping, a delegate to the ongoing annual session of the National People's Congress NPC, China's parliament.

Up to 80 per cent of China's rivers are choked with industrial and residential waste, with factories discharging 780 million tons of largely untreated industrial waste in 1999, state media have reported. Run-off of agricultural chemicals is a major problem in China's rivers, lakes and seas, NPC environment committee member Wang Tao told reporters.

Despite some development of organic substitutes for agricultural chemicals, "we can't solve it in the short term", Wang said. The government plans to spend 60 billion yuan 7.25 billion dollars by 2015 to clean up its most polluted sea, the Bohai, which flows into the Yellow Sea of northeast China.

Most of the money is earmarked for waste water and sewage treatment plants, with the top priority to reduce discharge of nitrates and phosphates into the sea. "We are trying hard to prevent water pollution" by working with factories and encouraging farmers not to overuse chemicals, NPC member Sun Honglie said. "Water prices are too low in both agricultural areas and cities," Sun said.

"People still have the attitude that water is a free natural resource to be used as they please," he said. In January, a government report said China lost more than 1,000 natural lakes in the last 50 years due to land reclamation for agricultural use and overuse of water for irrigation. Hubei province in central China had 1,052 lakes in the 1950s but now has just 83, the report said.

The government is determined not to repeat past mistakes as it accelerates the development of poor central western areas of the country, Qu said. It will give environmental protection and economic development "equal priority", he said. The nearly 3,000 NPC members are due to approve China's 10th Five-Year Plan next Thursday.