China's Olympic Dream Turns into Real Nightmare -- Olympic nightmare: A red
tide in the Yellow Sea / IHT
http://img.iht.com/images/2008/06/30/30chinaclose550.jpg
Residents clearing the coastline of Qingdao, Shandong province on Monday.
(Stringer/Reuters)
International Herald Tribune
Olympic nightmare: A red tide in the Yellow Sea
By Jim Yardley
Monday, June 30, 2008
BEIJING: With less than six weeks before it plays host to the Olympic
sailing regatta, the city of
Qingdao has mobilized thousands of people and an armada of small boats to
clean up an algae bloom
that is choking large stretches of the coastline and threatening to impede
the Olympic competition.
Local officials have initiated an all-out effort to clean up the algae by
mid-July. Media re****ts
estimate that as many as 20,000 people have either volunteered or been
ordered to participate in the
operation, while 1,000 boats are scooping algae out of the Yellow Sea. The
official news agency,
Xinhua, re****ted that algae currently covered a third of the coastal
waters designated for the
Olympic races.
Water quality has been a concern for the sailing events, given that many
coastal Chinese cities dump
untreated sewage into the sea. At the same time, rivers and tributaries
emptying into coastal waters
are often contaminated with high levels of nitrates from agricultural and
industrial runoff. These
nitrates contribute to the red tides of algae that often bloom along
sections of China's coastline.
But officials in Qingdao said pollution and poor water quality did not
have a "substantial link" to
the current outbreak, according to Xinhua. Instead, scientists blamed the
bloom on increased
rainfall and warmer waters in the Yellow Sea. Algae are now blooming over
more than 12,900 square
kilometers, or 5,000 square miles, of the sea, according to Xinhua.
"We will make all our efforts to finish this job," said a propaganda
official in Qingdao. "Now,
forces from the entire province have become involved." He said ****ps and
boats had been sent from
two other coastal cities, Rizhao and Yantai, to help haul away the algae.
Yuan Zhiping, an official with the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Committee, said
Sunday that the
government would attempt to block algae from floating into the Olympic
sailing area by installing a
fenced perimeter in the sea that is more than 50 kilometers, or 30 miles,
long.
"I believe we will make sure the Olympics sailing area is clean by July 15
through our efforts, and
make sure the Olympics sailing goes smoothly," Yuan said, according to the
Shandong News Web site.
Photographs in the Chinese media showed rickety wooden boats overflowing
with green mounds of algae
collected from the sea. One photo showed a young boy crouched on a beach
beside piles of the leafy
glop as a dump truck carried off a large load of algae. State media
re****ted that 100,000 tons of
the algae had already been taken out of the water. Much of it was being
trans****ted to farms as feed
for pigs and other animals, according to news re****ts.
Residents of Qingdao have been anticipating the city's Olympic moment for
several years.
One local newspaper re****ted that 11,000 college students had volunteered
for cleanup duty during
the weekend. Several companies organized teams of employees to help.
The massive algae outbreak comes as some sailing teams are already in
Qingdao preparing for the
Olympics.
Photographs in the Australian press showed an Australian team seemingly
stuck in a carpet of algae
during a training run.
Huang Yuanxi contributed research.
International Herald Tribune Copyright
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