Yellow River suffers as China powers ahead

CHINA:Hydropower projects, less rainfall and severe pollution are just some of the problems afflicting 'China's Sorrow', writes Clifford Coonanin Beijing

Over-herding, over-fishing, coal pollution, dam-building and human encroachment have killed off 50 fish species in China's second-longest river, the Yellow River, and the river's alarming plight threatens growth in the region.

The Yellow River once made its away along 5,464 kilometres through nine provinces, supplying water to more than 150 million people and watering 15 per cent of the country's scarce agricultural land.

The Yellow River was the cradle of Chinese civilisation over 5,000 years ago, but it is also closely tied in with China's future, as without water, economic development in northern China will not be able to continue at its current breakneck pace.

The river runs from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in the west across the parched northern provinces of China, through the flood plains of Shaanxi, where it runs through the coal district and picks up massive quantities of pollutants, then on to Henan and Shandong.

It is increasingly a graveyard for fish species.

"The Yellow River used to be host to more than 150 species of fish, but a third of them are now extinct, including some precious ones," an official from the agriculture ministry told the People's Daily newspaper.

The river was known as "China's Sorrow" because it would regularly burst its banks and flood the surrounding farmland.

It's sometimes called the "World's Muddiest River" because of the amount of loose silt that it brings in its wake.

These days environmental degradation means the Yellow River often runs dry before it reaches the sea at the Gulf of Bohai and the flow of the river hit historic lows during the first 10 months of last year.

There is increasingly nothing left to fish in the river - fishing has fallen by 40 per cent.

"It can be mainly blamed on hydropower projects that block fish migration routes, declining water flow caused by scarce rainfall, overfishing and severe pollution," the official told the newspaper.

What fish there are in the Yellow River are often inedible. In November, several parts of eastern China banned sales of turbot after carcinogenic residues were discovered inside the fish.

Last month engineers diverted water from the Yellow River into Baiyangdian Lake, the "Pearl of North China" that is the largest freshwater lake in the country's northern part, amid efforts to restore its ecological functions.

Recent years have seen a frenzy of dam-building in China, as the country seeks to shift away from dirty, expensive coal-fired power plants towards hydro-electricity.

The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze opened last year and is the biggest dam in the world, but there are hundreds of smaller projects being built on other rivers, including the Yellow River.

Dams also help to check flooding during the rainy seasons.

Controlling the flooding has long been a problem for the Chinese - at some points along its course the river bed is up to 15 metres higher than the surrounding fields because of the constant building and rebuilding of dykes along its route.

One famous figure in Chinese history is Da Yu, who mobilised villagers after a flood in 297 BC to build a dyke and drainage canals, before sinking an ox in the river to tame the flow.

Government experts acknowledge the harm that dams can do to the environment but say the economic benefits and the environmentally positive aspects of hydropower outweigh the negative impact on the surrounding land.

As you drive along China's rivers, including the Yellow River, you come across factories by the river, seemingly at random, pumping out poisonous clouds and filling the water with pollutants.

Pollution means that over two-thirds of the water is undrinkable in the Yellow River.

The government says it has tried to curb pollution by investing in waste treatment plants and closing major polluting plants along the river.

The Yangtze has its own fish worries - last month the white-fin dolphin was just the latest species to be feared extinct.