Step-up in pollution battle in Yangtze tributary

CHANGSHA - Environmental authorities in Central China's Hunan province have finished a detailed plan to tackle the heavy metal pollution that has for years ravaged the Xiangjiang River, a major tributary of the Yangtze River, according to an announcement on Wednesday.

The pollution remediation plan of Xiangjiang -- one the country's most polluted rivers -- is a detailed version of a plan approved by the State Council last year, according to Xie Li, spokesman and deputy director of the province's environmental protection department

Xiangjiang is dubbed the "mother river" of Hunan. It runs through eight of the province's major cities and provides drinking water for nearly 40 million people.

However, the river has also suffered 80 percent of Hunan's heavy metal pollution as many of the province's industrial plants are located in the Xiangjiang basin.

Under the plan, Hunan will upgrade heavy metal companies' pollution treatment facilities or even shut down some of them along the river as well as launch projects to deal with heavy metals currently in the river and in the soil of nearby farmland.

By 2015, the number of heavy metal companies will be cut by half compared with 2008 and pollution in the river is also expected to be pared down to half of that in 2008.

The new plan also states that local government officials are very likely to fail their performance evaluation if they do not complete tasks related to pollution prevention.