Situation Alert! The Yangtze River turns red!
China isn’t exactly known for their strong environmentalism and the Yangtze River has been quite a sad story of industrial pollution and environmental abuse over the years. But a stretch of China’s longest river has abruptly turned the color of tomato juice, and no one knows why.
The bright-red water appears concentrated around Chongqing, Southwest China’s largest industrial center (hmmmmm, not a surprise). The red water has also been reported at several other points along the river.
Investigators have yet to determine a cause, but the Telegraph reports that environmental officials are considering industrial pollution (ha! “considering industrial pollution”!) as possible sources for the color. I think the idea that this is a natural “red tide” of algae is pretty implausible but don’t think officials won’t try and spin it that way.
Perhaps what’s more disturbing is the river pours one trillion tons of water into the ocean every year. Last year Yangtze River protection authorities reassured the public that the 33.9 billion tons of industrial waste poured annually into the Yangtze River would not degrade the quality of the drinking water.
Really? I think I’d be a bit concerned.
I’ve always been perplexed at how the United States puts China on a pedestal for their economic development. Their explosive economic growth has come at a huge cost so why the US was so obsessed with being able to “compete” with China — as in lowering our environmental standards, was confounding to me. And this story epitomizes why “economic development” is not worth the high price we pay with our planet.
This looks like a pretty serious situation….
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All they need to do is take samples of the water & analyse them (preferably independently). Red Tide is saltwater algae so that’s unlikely… sand… would sink, wouldn’t it? Industrial pollution, maybe, but there would have had to be one heck of a quantity dumped into that river at once to make it do that…
There can be an algal bloom, which occurs in fresh water when algae accumulates rapidly. So freshwater can produce a red tide. BUT its highly unlikely this has anything to do w/ algae. Im sure they will take plenty of samples. The question is will they tell us the truth and I would venture to say thats a big “no”.
But in response to it being 1 heck of a quantity…I suspect something natural did occur perhaps w/ the sand that revealed industrial pollution already present. and now they can hide all the crap theyve been dumping.