The following news excerpts were tweeted by Lian Yue, translated by CDT:

(1)  From China News Net 2009-10-23 18:19:4

Dongting Lake, the second largest freshwater lake in China, is now in the most severe water crisis of the last sixty years.  The water levels are super low, fishermen have no fish to catch, and their livehood is endangered.  Chen Wenping, director of the integral department of the Command Center for Flood and Drought Prevention of Hunan Province, told reporters, there has been a continual drought in the Dongting Lake region since August, and the main reason for such extreme low water levels is the experimental water storage of Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River.

中国第二大淡水湖洞庭湖陷入60年来罕见水危机，超低水位导致渔民无鱼可捕，生计陷入困境。湖南省防汛抗旱指挥部综合处处长陈文平对记者表示，8月以来洞庭湖周边水系地区持久干旱，以及长江三峡试验性蓄水是造成水位超低的主要原因 -

(2) From Xinhua News Agency 2007-3-7

On March 2007, Peng Qiyou (彭启友), director of the Science and Technology Committee of China Yangtze River Three Gorges Project Development Company, told Xinhua News Agency: “The Three Gorges Dam Project’s ecological and environmental impact on the downstream lakes is being exaggerated.”

2007年3月，全国人大代表、中国长江三峡工程开发总公司科技委员会主任彭启友对新华社说：“三峡工程对下游湖泊的生态环境影响被夸大了。”

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Dongting lake, Lian Yue, Three Gorges Dam
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From Bloomberg:

China is building a new Great Wall — a relative miniature at 1 meter (3.3 feet) high — to guard against hordes of pillaging mice.

About 2 billion mice nesting on the shores of China’s second-largest freshwater lake gnawed their way through 520,000 hectares (1.3 million acres) of crop land when rising water drove them from their burrows. Such plagues underline China’s growing struggle to maintain a stable environment, said Yang Hualin, director of the Chinese Pest Control Association in Beijing. [Full Text]

See also the illustrated China Daily article on the rodent plague and CDT’s coverage of the flooding that pushed the rodents inland.

[Image: Rat bones on the banks of Dongting Lake, from Bloomberg.]

© Morgan Figuers for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Dongting lake, environment, mice
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The Tale of the White Serpent, a household story in China, is set in Dongting Lake. The beautiful romance of the lovers of Bai Shuzhen and Louyi is gone with this seriously polluted lake.

Hunan provincial government ordered all paper mills in the area of Dongting Lake, the second largest fresh-water lake to close until they could reduce water pollution to meet the standard.

(...)
Read the rest of Water pollution in Dongting Lake – Hegel Chong (94 words)

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Dongting lake, Hunan, water pollution
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The article notes recent news that the Baiji, or Yangtze River dolphin, which used to swim in Dongting, has been declared “functionally extinct” and places a preponderance of blame for the lake’s deterioration on the 101 paper factories that “clandestinely discharge” more than 100 tons of untreated industrial effluent into the lake every year.

(...)
Read the rest of Lakes? Who needs lakes? (179 words)

© Zhaohua Li for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Dongting lake, Hunan, water pollution, WWF
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