KMW Blog Sep 3, 2015: Impossible remediation bill for China's contaminated soil on 20% of arable land

Posted: Sep 3, 2015	JK: Impossible remediation bill for China's contaminated soil on 20% of arable land
Published: Sep 2, 2015	FT: Chinese Environment: Ground Operation
Lucy Hornby of the Financial Times provides an excellent overview of China's efforts to deal with its serious soil contamination problem. Water and air pollution have received the most publicity because it is so visible and experienced. Soil contamination is more insidious because it invisibly works its way into the food chain and manifests itself as disease down the road. China conducted a $150 million national soil pollution survey in 2006-2011 that quickly became a state secret due to its alarming conclusion that one-fifth of arable land was contaminated It was only published in 2014, but what remained a state secret is where and how bad the soil contamination is. The contamination cycle is complex. One source is the many industrial plants built inland during the fifties far away from major urban centers which spewed particulates into the air that wind and rain dropped onto surrounding farmland. They also dumped wastewater into both rivers, from where it was pumped onto fields for irrigation, or directly onto fields like giant settling ponds. From the fields the contaminants were leached out, ending up back in the rivers for pumping back onshore downstream. As urban centers expanded around industrial hubs polluting plants relocated farther afield in rural areas, leaving behind polluted city land and creating new pollution spreading centers in agricultural areas. Rice is very effective at absorbing heavy metals, which is why rice has been adopted as a remediation tool for contaminated areas. But it is also a food staple whose origin can be difficult to discern. While the United States has numerous polluted sites, typically from past mines, the pollution tends to be localized and away from farmland. China's pollution sits in agricultural areas and thus is not as easily avoided and simply earmarked for future remediation. Hornby quotes Lan Hong, a professor, as giving a $1 trillion estimate to clean up the contamination. Of the heavy metals mentioned in the article, cadmium tops the list in terms of area affected, followed by nickel, arsenic, copper, mercury, lead, chromium and zinc. The article also provides statistics regarding how much of zoned areas have been designated polluted: 34.9% of abandoned industrial land, 33.4% of mining areas, 29.4% of industrial parks, 26.4% of irrigation areas using wastewater, 23.6% oil producing regions, 21.3% of solid waste treatment plants, and 20.3% of highway sides. What is interesting about these statistics is that the majority area of these zones is not contaminated, which suggestis that worst practice is not the Chinese way. Roadside pollution, caused by transport vehicle load loss, is especially vexing because the pollution seeps into surrounding areas over great distances. Hornby does not leave us with the feeling that China has a strategy for cleaning up the existing mess. It might still be better off regulating the emissions from operating sites, stopping pollutants from entering the atmosphere and water, both of which are self-cleansing over time. To what extent China's environmental awakening translates into action that has an impact on China's cost structure, both with regard to manufacturing and raw material extraction, is hard to predict. The manufacturing slowdown will give Chinese authorities extra incentive to shut down the worst polluters, which could result in production cutbacks in certain metals faster than expected.