It is not particularly easy to get information as to how things are panning out in China's campaign against water pollution, so I try to keep an eye out for relevant news relating to the opaque waters in that opaque country.
One Chinese news site, appropriately named Shine (the re-branded Shanghai Daily) has since the start of this year featured a couple of reports on developments in China's efforts to clean up its water.
Yesterday, one report under the headline China's air and water quality improves, stated that the country had made progress in tackling air and water pollution over 2018, according to China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment.
The relevant extract relating to the water quality improvements is in the second half of the article:
...Meanwhile, surface water quality improved in 2018, with more samples taken from river and lakes reaching standards fit for human use.
Among the 1,940 samples from across China last year, 71 percent were considered grade III or better, meaning they were suitable for drinking and fishing, the environment ministry said, an increase of 3.1 percentage points from 2017.
The amount of “below grade V” water that cannot be used in either agriculture or industry fell by 1.6 percentage points to 6.7 percent in 2018.
Phosphorus and ammonium nitrate, which mainly come from industrial waste water, pesticides and organic fertilizers, were identified as the major pollutants of water pollution.
Chemical oxygen demand, a measure used to determine organic content in water, was also found to exceed the national level in the “below grade V” rivers.
China is attempting to clean up black and stinky streams flowing through cities, and improve its natural reserves.
Note that mention in the last line of the 'black and stinky streams', which seems to be one of the speciality area that Phoslock is heavily involved in: certainly, the term 'black and odorous water' or variants of these words has been mentioned in relation to the China business in every presentation over the past 12 months.
The second, earlier, report this year from Shine was on the rehabilitation of one of the aforementioned 'black and stinky streams flowing through cities', namely the Suzhou Creek which runs through Shanghai.
The stage four of the Suzhou Creek rehabilitation project started in full swing, Shanghai Party Secretary Li Qiang announced on December 30. As a major environmental protection and investment project in the city, it marks a new stage in city’s comprehensive treatment of its mother river Suzhou Creek.
The rehabilitation project is aimed to improve the water quality of the creek and its flood prevention performance. It will also make the waterfront of the creek a more eco-friendly and user-friendly space.
Suzhou Creek covers an area of 855 square kilometres and flows through 12 districts as well as 2,012 branch waterways across the city. The city has carried out three stages of rehabilitation projects to treat the water of the creek since 1990s.
The rehabilitation has so significantly improved the water environment of the creek that the main stream of the creek is no more black or malodorous.
The Shanghai government has invested over 25 billion yuan (US$ 3.6 billion) in the fourth stage of the project.
According to the project plan, by 2020, the creek will clean up all polluted waters rated at 5 — water so polluted it can't be used and is even ugly to look at. Meanwhile, the transporting function of the creek will improve and the levees built alongside it will be consolidated.
Ying Yong, mayor of Shanghai, said the Suzhou Creek rehabilitation is the most important project among the city's water environment treatments.
The fourth stage of the rehabilitation is vital to the city's campaign to fight pollution, Ying said.
Assuming this report is accurate, it is interesting to note the statement that the water of the creek has improved dramatically, to the extent that the main watercourse of the creek is no longer 'black or malodorous'.
We know treating this black, odorous water seems to be one of the focal activities of this company in China. So is Phoslock involved in this fourth-stage treatment of Suzhou Creek?.
I have a suspicion the answer could be 'yes', for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, the Phoslock factory at Changxing and Suzhou are located on opposite shores of the large water body known as Lake Taihu (pictured below). This lake has long suffered from major episodes of cyanobacteria contamination, even as recently as last year.
Taihu is the source of Suzhou Creek, so given the history of that lake it follows that if they want to clean up Suzhou Creek, they would also be required to take measures to mitigate the growth of problematic algae.
Secondly, the proximity of the factory to Shanghai may not be incidental. It wouldn't be surprising if the Changxing location was chosen partly with an eye to the redevelopment of Suzhou Creek, which would have been known prior to the establishment of the factory in 2017.
Certainly, we know they have treated a canal in Changxing, which like Suzhou Creek would be a tributary to lake Taihu, as there was a photo of this on the AGM Presentation of 22/11/18 (pg 6).
My sense is that the stage four rehabilitation of Suzhou Creek was probably amongst the 'pipeline projects' mentioned in the November AGM presentation, and if this assumption is correct, Phoslock might be set to receive a small parcel of that US $3.6 billion that has apparently been allocated by the Shanghai government to this project.
I'm assuming that the figure quoted in the above report is accurate: it does sound like a massive figure. Then again, Shanghai is the largest city in the world, so this might make sense.
Phoslock shareholders haven't had much good news for a while, and many are surely quite demoralised. But it would be wise to keep in mind the warning of Wang Shucheng, China's former Water minister, who reportedly stated that many northern Chinese cities would run out of water in 15 years. That was back in 2005, so if he was right, it would appear that China is going to need to do a lot of work to improve the local water situation over next 12 months.
(20min delay)
