China’s Bohai Bay is turning into a dumping ground for northern coastal provinces as it receives nearly a half of all sewage and wastes discharged into the country’s offshore waters, severely depleting fishery resources, a mainland newspaper reported.
Every year, nearly 2.8 billion tonnes of sewage and 700,000 tonnes of solid waste spew into Bohai Bay through 57 rivers and creeks, according to the Economic Information Daily, a newspaper affiliated with Xinhua.
Growth of industrial projects in Tianjin, Hebei, Liaoning and Shandong, along with extensive shipping in the ports of Bohai Bay, are blamed for the worsening sea pollution.
Waters off the paper mills in Longkou, Shandong province, and zinc plants in Huludao, in Liaoning, are dead zones – depleted of all marine organisms, according to the newspaper.
Due to severe pollution, Bohai Bay virtually has no large fish stocks, and smaller fisheries have also been severely damaged. The annual fish catch has dropped from 30,000 tonnes – the historical high – to between 1,000 to 3,000 tonnes, the report says.
The newspaper quoted experts as saying that existing laws and regulations do not have specific requirements for tackling oceanic pollution, and relative emission standards are rather low.
Meanwhile, a variety of government agencies - including the separate bureaus for environmental protection, transportation, oceanic and fishery management - are all involved. The lack of integration and coordination makes pollution management even more elusive.
Yang Bo, an official at Tangshan oceanic bureau’s environmental protection department, said efforts to tackle the pollution problem were hampered by a severe lack of manpower and information.
“Our department is in charge of monitoring and forecasting the oceanic environment around Tangshan, but we got this information from a monitoring station in Qinhuangdao – another city in Hebei province,” he said. “As for where the pollution comes from and the best way to clean it up, we have no information.”
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