We could have avoided the blue-green algae bloom in the Tai Lake in 2007

28 May, 2007, blue-green algae bloom took possession of the Tai Lake in one night. The tap water in Wuxi City immediately became smelly and undrinkable, which brought a lot of trouble to Wuxi citizens’ daily life. The essential reason of the disaster was the superabundant nitrogen and phosphorus in the Tai Lake, which was poured into the lake with industrial wastewater. Since people had realized the reason for years, we could have avoided the disaster by preventing more nitrogen and phosphorus from going into the lake and decreasing the existing amount. The government should have enforced policies on the treatment of wastewater before it was sluiced. The factories should have obeyed the policies to set up facilities to decontaminate their wastewater. However, these basic controls of water pollution were not executed strictly. Blue-green algae bloom burst out several times previously, and people had already known the condition of the Tai Lake. The government should have taken the issue seriously while they only tried to kill the blue-green algae only after a terrible bloom for a short time. Actually there are several efficient ways to reduce the nitrogen and phosphorus as long as they are conducted continuously, such as organizing people to fish out the blue-green algae which is natural fertilizer for soil, introducing chubs, who eat blue-green algae, to the lake. If we had faith and patience in improving the water quality of the Tai Lake, the unprecedented blue-green algae bloom should have been avoided.

My blog buddy was: Xue Jie.