HK drug maker accused of destroying lake
By Li Qian |
June 8, 2012, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
A MAJOR Hong Kong-based drug maker has been dumping industrial waste and discharging sewage, severely damaging China's eighth largest freshwater lake in north China, according to a report in China Business News.
The pollution continued even though United Laboratories International Holdings Ltd was cited by local authorities and told to clean the mess years ago, the report stated.
The Wuliangsu Lake in Bayannur Prefecture in the northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, once called "a pearl beyond the Great Wall," is more like a urinal now, local residents said, after five years of waste dumping by the drug company, according to the report. The lake emits a stink, and a multitude of dead fish float on its foul, foamy surface. The water is fit neither to irrigate farmland nor for exposure to the skin.
Local residents say they can't bear the smell and have to close their windows to sleep.
The pharmaceutical company's Inner Mongolia branch was ordered in 2008 to suspend operations and properly process its industrial waste after reports surfaced that the factory had secretly buried its waste in a pit of nearly 50 hectares, the report stated.
Authorities were also told that wastewater was discharged through irrigation ditches linked to the Yellow River, and that waste had soaked into the groundwater and caused villagers to suffer from unusual illnesses, the report said.
But the authorities' citations were ignored, and contamination continued to pour into the lake and surrounding wetlands, the report stated.
The Wuliangsu Lake, covering nearly 300 square kilometers, was once the second-largest fishery in Inner Mongolia. Every year, millions of migratory birds visited it. It's now the biggest pollution storage basin in the western part of Inner Mongolia, China Business News said.
The company's plant in Chengdu, capital of southwestern Sichuan Province, also was the source of severe pollution, the report said. In 2007, it spent 150 million yuan (US$23.73 million) on a cleanup under pressure from the province's environmental authorities.
However, the Chengdu government found the company in violation again this year and ordered it to process its waste in a timely fashion, according to local news portal newssc.net.
United Laboratories has five plants on the mainland and one in Hong Kong. The maker of generic antibiotics is listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange.
The pollution continued even though United Laboratories International Holdings Ltd was cited by local authorities and told to clean the mess years ago, the report stated.
The Wuliangsu Lake in Bayannur Prefecture in the northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, once called "a pearl beyond the Great Wall," is more like a urinal now, local residents said, after five years of waste dumping by the drug company, according to the report. The lake emits a stink, and a multitude of dead fish float on its foul, foamy surface. The water is fit neither to irrigate farmland nor for exposure to the skin.
Local residents say they can't bear the smell and have to close their windows to sleep.
The pharmaceutical company's Inner Mongolia branch was ordered in 2008 to suspend operations and properly process its industrial waste after reports surfaced that the factory had secretly buried its waste in a pit of nearly 50 hectares, the report stated.
Authorities were also told that wastewater was discharged through irrigation ditches linked to the Yellow River, and that waste had soaked into the groundwater and caused villagers to suffer from unusual illnesses, the report said.
But the authorities' citations were ignored, and contamination continued to pour into the lake and surrounding wetlands, the report stated.
The Wuliangsu Lake, covering nearly 300 square kilometers, was once the second-largest fishery in Inner Mongolia. Every year, millions of migratory birds visited it. It's now the biggest pollution storage basin in the western part of Inner Mongolia, China Business News said.
The company's plant in Chengdu, capital of southwestern Sichuan Province, also was the source of severe pollution, the report said. In 2007, it spent 150 million yuan (US$23.73 million) on a cleanup under pressure from the province's environmental authorities.
However, the Chengdu government found the company in violation again this year and ordered it to process its waste in a timely fashion, according to local news portal newssc.net.
United Laboratories has five plants on the mainland and one in Hong Kong. The maker of generic antibiotics is listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange.
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