Environmental Science & Engineering - www.esemag.com - January 2006
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No free lunch in environmental issues

by Tom Davey

The terrible environmental tragedies in North China have now threatened drinking water sources in both China and Russia. Not one, but two serious spills occurred within weeks on the Songhua River. Exacerbating the situation was the fact that Chinese authorities, at first, were in a state of denial which compromised prompt remedial action and posed serious threats to downstream communities such as Harbin, one of China’s largest cities. City authorities initially switched off water supplies for ‘maintenance purposes’.

Ignorant of Man’s puny political boundaries, the surge of toxins including benzene - reportedly at 100 times ‘safe’ levels’- relentlessly moved downstream to the China/Russia border, threatening both countries’ water supplies. This disaster, of course, need not have happened. China no longer lags behind in science, technology and manufacturing, as it has regained some of the engineering eminence it had centuries ago.

Now a large percentage of Chinese graduates are in science and engineering, a combination which helped to unleash an economic surge in manufacturing, somewhat redolent of the first Industrial Revolution in Britain. The sheer rapidity and extent of Chinese economic growth stunned economists and political scientists. However in recent years, reports of serious air and water pollution emerged long before the Songhua River pollution.

Yet ironically, in historical terms, it is not too long ago that China embarked on the ‘back yard steel making’ debacle of a political decision light years away from metallurgical and economic realities. To meet government quotas, perfectly good appliances were scrapped and fed into small local furnaces as though steel could be made like cooking hamburgers. How times have changed.

Both China and India now have a significantly higher percentage of engineering graduates from their universities than in North America and many other advanced nations. Both these countries are now riding on an economic surge. Some three decades ago – a fleeting moment in historical terms - these countries were among Third World nations. No longer.

The first Industrial Revolution resulted in serious toxic waste problems as well as serious air pollution in the UK, then known as the workshop of the world. Significant as these environmental insults were, they were based on a relatively small population. Conversely, China and India have both doubled their populations in the last three decades to some 2.5 billion while their manufacturing capabilities – and environmental impacts – have grown even more dramatically.

Long after the Songhua River disaster has evaporated as a news item, I think both health effects and environmental remediation will continue.

It should be stressed that China is not the only country to ignore environmental realities. In its emergence as an industrial power, Britain also unleashed significant air and water pollution. But later the British did respond with such pioneering legends as Ardern and Lockett whose work led to the activated sludge process in the early 1900s – still a basic component in wastewater treatment.

Environmental neglect can lead to political reactions based on erroneous public perceptions, rather than ecological realities.

These days governments boast of enacting ‘tough’ environmental laws which bear little relation to the complexities of environmental engineering and science. Yes, there are industries which are environmental vandals and have wreaked havoc on both the environment and public safety. They should be punished with severe criminal sanctions. But for many of the ‘tough’ new regulations, often hastily drafted to suit political ends, the realities can be somewhat different.

Getting tough on polluters has a nice ring to Environment Ministers’ press releases which can convince the public that tough environmental regulations will result in environmental remediation. I think it was the late Joe Greene when he was Federal Minister of Mines, Energy and Resources, who first proclaimed: “The polluters must pay”.

But some of the proposed sanctions by various environment ministries are punitive to the point of absurdity. One recent statement said that there must be zero pollution entering the Great Lakes. As we can measure contaminants to parts per quadrillion, approximately one second in 32 million years, zero emissions are impossible.

This is not a weak-kneed concession to industries either. There is not a municipality, provincial or federal government facility that can reduce emissions to zero levels. The laws of the land must at least recognize the immutable laws of physics and chemistry.

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