China's Great Idea - Let's Dump Sewage & Toxins Into "Evaporation Ponds", Where It Will Disappear!
(Beijing) – Deep in the Tengger Desert, near a community of cattle herders about 700 kilometers west of Beijing, pipes from a complex of coal processing and chemical factories once spewed slimy wastewater into six ponds.
The "evaporation ponds" were designed to protect the desert's sensitive environment. By exposing wastewater to dry air and sunlight on the pond's surface, water was supposed to dissipate into the sky, leaving behind salt and toxins for further processing. But the ponds never worked as planned. An oily film on each football field-sized surface inhibited evaporation. And daily for about 11 years these factories in the Tengger Industrial Park, a complex run by the city of Alashan, in the northern region of Inner Mongolia, and whose companies reported a combined 1.2 billion yuan in revenues in 2010, released more wastewater into the ponds.
Area residents and environmental groups complained about fumes, possible groundwater contamination and other problems. The complaints persisted for years until this fall, when the ponds were closed and filled following central government intervention.
The turnaround at Tengger is an example of what could happen soon at up to 100 evaporation pond sites across northwestern China. Pond pollution warnings have been sounded throughout the Yellow River valley's western industrial belt, which stretches across the Inner Mongolia and Ningxia autonomous regions and eastward into Shaanxi Province. Some ponds operate in the far western Xinjiang region as well.
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t the Tengger site, wastewater seeping from ponds has reportedly contaminated area groundwater. A 2013 study of the site by Ma Yong, deputy head of the Law Center at the All-China Environment Federation, found excessive levels of phenol, sulfides and coliform bacteria in water pumped from drinking wells used by people living within 2 kilometers of the industrial park. Some environmental experts have warned that pollutants entering the groundwater from the ponds in the Yellow River valley industrial belt could eventually reach the river, a vital source of drinking water for millions of people in several provinces. Zhou said evaporation ponds are essentially filled with "sewage that's being directly discharged into the desert, which pollutes the soil, groundwater and the air."
Ed. - NO!
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http://english.caixin.com/2014-11-19/100752852.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
... the Western world made during its own industrial development.
What's next? Building residential housing over these toxic filled-in "evaporation" ponds?
Quite a few of the towns I've lived in had homes that were built on our near toxic waste dumps that later became Superfund cleanup sites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_the_United_States
