To Save Olympic Sailing Races, China Fights Algae

[Woodmonkey]

BEIJING — With less than six weeks before it plays host to the Olympic sailing regatta, the city of Qingdao, China, has mobilized thousands of people and an armada of small boats to clean up an algal bloom choking the coastline and threatening to impede the competition.

Local officials have begun an intense effort to clean up the algae by mid-July. News reports estimate as many as 20,000 people have either volunteered or been ordered to participate in the operation, while 1,000 boats are scooping algae out of the Yellow Sea. The country’s official news agency, Xinhua, reported that algae currently cover a third of the coastal waters designated for the Olympic competition.

Water quality has been a concern for the Olympic sailing events. Many coastal Chinese cities dump untreated sewage into the sea, and rivers and tributaries emptying into coastal waters are often contaminated with high levels of nitrates from agricultural and industrial runoff. These nitrates contribute to the red tides of algae that often bloom along sections of China’s coastline.

But officials in Qingdao said in recent days that pollution and poor water quality did not have a “substantial link” to the current outbreak, according to Xinhua. Instead, scientists blamed the increased rainfall and warmer waters in the Yellow Sea for the bloom. Algae blooms now affect more than 5,000 square miles of seawater, Xinhua reported.

“We will make all our efforts to finish this job,” said a propaganda official in Qingdao, who asked not to be named because of the political delicacy of the issue. “Now, forces from the entire province have become involved.” He said ships and boats have been dispatched from two other coastal cities, Rizhao and Yantai, to help haul away the algae.

Yuan Zhiping, an official with the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Committee, said Sunday that the government would try to block algae from floating into the Olympic sailing area by installing in the sea a fenced perimeter more than 30 miles long.

“I believe we will make sure the Olympics sailing area is clean by July 15 through our efforts, and make sure the Olympics sailing goes smoothly,” Mr. Yuan said, according to the Shandong News Web site.

Photographs in the Chinese news media showed rickety wooden boats overflowing with green mounds of algae collected from the sea. One photo showed a young boy crouched on a beach beside piles of the leafy glop as a dump truck carried off a large load of it. State news outlets reported that 100,000 tons of algae had already been taken out of the water. Much of it was being transported to farms as feed for pigs and other animals, according to news reports.

Residents of Qingdao and its environs, where about seven million people live, have been anticipating the city’s Olympic moment for years. One local newspaper reported that 11,000 college students had volunteered for cleanup duty over the weekend. Several companies had organized teams of employees to help.

The massive outbreak comes with some sailing teams already in Qingdao preparing for the Olympics. Photographs in the Australian news media showed an Australian team seemingly stuck in a carpet of algae during a training run.

In British news media, a British windsurfer who has been training in Qingdao, Bryony Shaw, said the algae would be an issue if the waters were not cleaned up. “There’s no way you can sail through it,” she said. “If it’s still here in August, it could be a real problem.”

Qingdao’s situation is another challenge for Beijing’s Olympic organizers, who have committed to delivering a clean and healthy environment for the Olympics.

Air quality remains a serious concern in Beijing. On Tuesday, the city will begin removing 300,000 high-polluting vehicles, mostly trucks, from local roads. Later in July, the city will institute temporary restrictions to remove half of all motor vehicles from the streets.

But air quality remains such a large problem that officials are also preparing contingency plans that could force factories across much of northern China to close temporarily if conditions warrant.

The Source

[john mclaughlin]

There will be a new olympic event added at this years games,slime wrestling,much like mud wrestling but much nastier