Monday, 4 March 2013

A tale of Chinese dwellers in a degraded land

By Liu Zhiyi
BAOTOU (Caixin Online) — Vegetable farmer Ren Zhongchen holds a title in his hand to half a hectare of land in Dalahai, just outside Baotou City, but he says the piece of paper is worthless.
Dalahai, home of the state-owned mining behemoth Baotou Steel in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is one of seven villages that has for years been promised compensation for pollution linked to birth deformities and barren farmland.
The surrounding villages were the primary source of fresh produce for Baotou until the end of the 1990s, when crop yields fell to nothing. Farmers said some toxin-resistant plants such as wolfberry and wild olive plants grow, but even these species eventually wither without fruit.
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The more than 3,000 residents of the seven villages are only a few kilometers from a massive tailings dam that has been used by the steel company since the 1950s. The mine dump is 11 square kilometers in area. The tailings dam is China’s largest, containing more than 180 million tons of metal waste powder.

Dental deformities

The hazards of pollution began to appear in 1979. That year, villagers reported a significant drop in crop yields, and the city government offered residents compensation. But the subsidy was not enough to cover the lost produce.
Then physical deformities started to appear in livestock. The teeth of cattle and goats grew abnormally fast. The front teeth of the animals would grow too large for them to close their jaws, and the livestock began to die of starvation.
The teeth of many farmers began to change and their bones became extremely fragile. “Men suffered bone cracks and fractures just walking down the street,” said Tian Xiong, former director of Xinguangyicun Village.
Villagers have reported more severe instances of physical abnormalities in recent years. Some people say they have lost all their teeth as a result of the pollution, and others have reported abnormal teeth among children. Villagers say children have grown more than one row of teeth.
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Shi Yushan, now in his 70s, has served as the village head of Dalahai for 27 years. “The contaminated water leached into our wells and there is no way for us to grow anything on the land,” said Shi.
Farmers said that previously they only needed to drill 30 meters down to reach clean drinking water. But now they say the water 160 meters beneath the ground is barely fit for human consumption.
Researcher Wang Jianying, from Inner Mongolia Science and Technology University, said research hasn’t confirmed a link between the ailments of local farmers and the tailings site. However, research does show that the water in the area is severely contaminated.
A study conducted by Wang’s colleagues, Miao Feifei and Si Wantong, in May 2012 found that the fluoride ion content in the water near the tailing site was 500% higher than found in underground water.
However, Wang said the villagers’ tooth and bone conditions were in line with too much fluoride ion intake.
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Cost of cancer

A village commission report on cancer mortality rates found that from 1999 to 2006, 61 residents died of cancer. (The village has a population of less than 1,000.) Many residents now say they avoid taking medical tests for fear of finding an ailment they cannot afford to treat.
“I can’t think of it now. Instead, making more money is my first priority,” said villager Su Yonghong.
Six of the seven villages around the tailings site have higher-than-normal rates of cancer mortality. However, all of the experts Caixin interviewed declined to say any direct linkage could be made between death rates and pollution.
The Baotou Radioactive Management Center released a 2006 report which stated that 3,160 tons of thorium, a radioactive element, were dumped into the pool every year. Radioactive levels during that year, said the report, reached the containment limit.
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The report also warned that radioactive contamination reached 3 kilometers from the pool with a total polluted area of 15 square kilometers, 1.5 times the area in 2002 and three times the reading in 1998.

Missing compensation

Over the years, local residents have struggled against local authorities and Baotou Steel Company but with little success.
A 1996 protest that disrupted construction near the tailings pool resulted in a compensation agreement with the local government. Four villages were to receive a total of two million yuan ($321,543) USDCNY -0.0463%  for all pollution-related issues, including health claims. The city environmental protection agency vowed to step up monitoring.
The health claims continued to pile on, and by 2001 the steel giant was forced to make a lump sum payment of 5.8 million yuan to four villages. It also signed an agreement to commercially develop the polluted land. In 2003, the steel company pledged to pay another 1.95 million yuan to residents and pay an extra 500,000 yuan to one village in relocation fees.
Then, in 2007, the local government, together with Baotou Steel, spent 500 million yuan to build apartment buildings in one of the villages. However, residents said only 20 families have moved into the new homes as of January.
Researchers also worry about the risk of earthquakes, especially what fractures could do to the stability of the walls around the tailings pond. The government has promised that a new steel refinery will be built to the north of Baotou in 2014 and the waste pool will be closed by 2020.
However, villagers have packed up and left. Others have left, then come back in the hopes that they are still eligible for compensation. Many villagers said they failed to receive annual compensation promised from Baotou Steel.
“They didn’t give us the compensation owed from last year. This year? I won’t even think about it,” said one villager.
Years of missing compensation claims have not spurred anyone to file a lawsuit, however. “Besides, aren’t the government and the court the same?” said one villager.
Read this report on Caixin Online.
 
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