Snce the 1980, Lake Tai, the center of China’s ancient “land of fish and rice,” succumbed to floods of industrial and agricultural waste. Toxic cyanobacteria, or very often referred to as pond scum, turned the big lake murky green. The odor of decay choked anyone who came within a mile of its shores. At least two million people who live among the canals, rice paddies and chemical plants around the lake had to stop drinking and cooking with their main source of freshwater.
The first and most important reason that Lake Tai is heavily polluted is because there are large amounts of indusrial development. During the 1980's Chinese companies sprung up and developed rapidly, such as the chemical industry, metal wieldng and printing and dyeing industry. These industries had low efficiency and contributed greatly to the pollution of the lake. At that time, people didn't care about pollution control and from the middle 1990's, the energy and water consuming companies still occupied a large part of the indusry.
Since Lake Tai is one of the most developed areas in China, it has high urbanization levels. Its population density is very high, about 928 people per kilometer square. This has lead to huge amounts of waste in a very little place. So people just dump all their trash into the lake.
Rapid industrial and agricultural development in the last 20 years have caused water eutrophication in Lake Taihu to become one of most serious environmental issues in the whole of China. Eutrophication is the enrichment of an ecosystem's chemical nutrients and human activity can accelerate the nutrients in the ecosystem. Usually, eutrophication turns the lake green with algae and chemicals and kills animals. You can smell the stench rising up from the lake and it might take years to clean up the mess. There are many effects of this, so click on the button to go the the Effects page.
“If you don’t clean pollution up in the first decade, the process will take several times as long.”---Employee of the cleaning agency
The first and most important reason that Lake Tai is heavily polluted is because there are large amounts of indusrial development. During the 1980's Chinese companies sprung up and developed rapidly, such as the chemical industry, metal wieldng and printing and dyeing industry. These industries had low efficiency and contributed greatly to the pollution of the lake. At that time, people didn't care about pollution control and from the middle 1990's, the energy and water consuming companies still occupied a large part of the indusry.
Since Lake Tai is one of the most developed areas in China, it has high urbanization levels. Its population density is very high, about 928 people per kilometer square. This has lead to huge amounts of waste in a very little place. So people just dump all their trash into the lake.
Rapid industrial and agricultural development in the last 20 years have caused water eutrophication in Lake Taihu to become one of most serious environmental issues in the whole of China. Eutrophication is the enrichment of an ecosystem's chemical nutrients and human activity can accelerate the nutrients in the ecosystem. Usually, eutrophication turns the lake green with algae and chemicals and kills animals. You can smell the stench rising up from the lake and it might take years to clean up the mess. There are many effects of this, so click on the button to go the the Effects page.
“If you don’t clean pollution up in the first decade, the process will take several times as long.”---Employee of the cleaning agency