For a long time the upper reaches of the Hanjiang have been threatened by industrial and consumer waste. A Xinhua News Agency report on June 22 revealed that the thriving turmeric processing industry in southern Shaanxi Province has further exacerbated the river's pollution in recent years.  

The Hanjiang is to supply water for the middle line of the country's south-to-north water diversion project. Rising in Shizhonggou in Ningqiang County of Shaanxi, it runs for 918 kilometers before joining its longest tributary, the Danjiang, at Danjiangkou. It passes through the cities of Hanzhong, Shangluo and Ankang in Shaanxi and Shiyan in Hubei Province, with a catchment area of 100,000 sq km.

In Hanzhong the river is foamy and blackened, giving off an unbearable stink. Saponin producers on both banks discharge waste water into it day and night, seriously polluting both surface and ground water.

According to Hu Shibin, professor from the Northwest Sci-Tech University of Agriculture and Forestry, drawn from turmeric, saponin is an important raw material for steroid medicines used to treat cardiovascular diseases.

The country now has more than 200 saponin producers, most located in Shaanxi and Hubei in the Hanjiang's river valley. Nonetheless, due to a lack of technology, a majority of the firms' wastewater has been discharged without any treatment, making saponin production the country's second worst polluter after papermaking.

Shaanxi has 80-odd saponin firms whose production makes up half the nation's. Of them, 38 are based in Hanzhong, discharging some 1 million tons of wastewater into the Hanjiang annually. Less than a third of them have reached required standards for water treatment, while another third are not equipped with purification devices at all.

According to the overall program for the south-to-north water diversion project approved by the State Council in August 2002, its middle line will take water by 2010 from the Danjiangkou Reservoir in Hubei into major cities including Beijing, Tianjin, Shijiazhuang and Zhengzhou in the drought-prone north.

The increasingly worsening pollution in the Hanjiang's upper reaches is posing a serious threat to the safety of the project, but the local government faces a dilemma.

The trial planting of turmeric started in China in the 1960s. Currently its acreage is over 1.2 million mu (80,000 hectares) nationwide. Turmeric planting and processing has become a pillar industry in many places, helping local farmers get out of poverty and even become rich.

In Shaanxi alone, turmeric-growing areas account for half the country's total. In order not to cut off local farmers' incomes, Hu said the government cannot close down all saponin firms along the Hanjiang that don't meet wastewater treatment requirements.

According to Li Xiaolian, vice director of Shaanxi Environmental Protection Bureau, since 2002 his bureau and local governments have shut down 28 saponin firms. Meanwhile, they provided financial aid of 1.32 million yuan (US$159,000) for Hu's research on treatment of wastewater from the turmeric processing industry.

Meanwhile, another task team composed of researchers from China University of Geosciences is engaged in a similar study. Both have made some headway, but in terms of purification, there is nothing practically applicable at the moment.

Hu's study helped a turmeric processing firm in Xunyang County, Ankang City reduce its release of wastewater. This cost the provincial government 600,000 yuan (US$72,000), but failed to purify the firm's industrial wastewater, which continues flowing into the Hanjiang everyday.

Li said a working conference, cosponsored by the provincial commission of development and reform and the environmental protection bureau, was held on May 23 in Lintong County, Shaanxi. Experts and entrepreneurs discussed ways and means to cope with the pollution in the Hanjiang.

Despite a previous total investment of 2 million yuan (US$241,000) from the provincial government, more money is needed to further wastewater treatment research, they said.

To date there is still no national wastewater standard for the turmeric processing industry. In southern Shaanxi, different standards are used in different places. What standards are made decide the fate of turmeric processing firms, said conference attendees.

(China.org.cn by Shao Da, July 4, 2005)