Seems the Taihu Lake disaster won’t stay local. Now Beijing is feeling some heat. Translated from the Beijing Times:
Shangzhuang Reservoir (上庄水库), 30 kilometers northwest of Beijing, is infected too with what Taihu Lake is struggling to get rid of: algae bloom or eutrophication.
About 20 of Haidian District’s water affairs bureau employees are working all-out to fight the new problem, thanks to the recent heat and heavy rains. And the bureau actually has to hire more people, tripling its algae fighters to sweep the whole surface of the reservoir once every three days in order to prevent new pollution from accumulating faster than the clean-up.
Every day, nearly a ton of algae is collected up out of the water, along with shed leaves, plastic bags and other trash. Some parts of the resevoir are already smelling dead fish.
It’s learned that the algae bloom was a result of both water pollution and water refill from a lower, connected reservoir. The Shangzhuang resevoir, over 10,000 square meters in size, seems to not yet be a fatal concern, as it is not a major water source for the capital. [Full Text in Chinese]
[Image: a worker collecting up algae and other floating trash on the reservoir surface, via the Beijing Times]
