China city frets over algae bloom

Published: 4:47PM Wednesday July 02, 2008 Source: Reuters

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China's Olympic co-host city Qingdao has appealed for help from nearby ports to contain an algae bloom that has coated large swathes of offshore waters in green muck 40 days ahead of the Games.
   
Qingdao, which will host Olympic sailing events during the August Beijing Games, had asked coastal cities to help in clean-up efforts, and had already co-opted 10,000 local residents and troops, and more than 1,000 boats to dredge the resort town's bays.
   
Algae blooms regularly blight the shores of Qingdao, a former German concession port where Chinese flock every summer to swim in relatively clean waters.
   
Authorities had weeded out 100,000 tonnes of algae, floating and washed up onshore, Xinhua news agency said, citing officials at a briefing in Qingdao on Sunday.
   
"We have stressed to all the people devoted to this (clean-up) campaign that priority should be given to the Olympic venue and we expect to eliminate all these sea weeds before July 15," Xinhua quoted Yuan Zhiping, a Qingdao Olympic Sailing Committee official as saying.
   
More than 32 percent of sea earmarked for the Olympic events was covered in the algae, which had seeped into the training area and blocked some sailing routes, Xinhua said, adding at least 30 countries and regions were now training on local waters.
   
"This is more severe than common algae outbreaks," a microbiology professor surnamed He at Qingdao's Ocean University said by telephone, adding ferries to nearby islands had suspended services for several days.
   
Pictures carried by local media showed officials and soldiers raking up piles of spongy weed. A witness reported seeing trucks loaded with weed parked on local beaches.
   
Media reports, which referred to the green tide as hu tai meaning water-borne lichen, said it had been caused by a confluence of wind and currents influenced by stormy conditions in southern China.
   
"In guaranteeing the safety of surrounding waters, do the utmost to support and aid Qingdao in every item of work," Sunday's Qingdao Morning Post quoted Shandong province's governor Jiang Daming, as saying in work instructions to nearby coastal cities.
   
China's coastal waters and inland lakes regularly suffer algae blooms, often exacerbated by pollution from chemical factories and fertiliser run-off from farms.
   
A major outbreak last year on eastern China's Tai Lake cut off drinking water to millions of residents in Jiangsu province's Wuxi city.

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