Hangzhou - Workers Drag 100s Of Dead Pigs Out Of River Supplying Water For 3 Million People

[hatrack]

Dozens of workers in Hangzhou are struggling desperately to retrieve the carcasses of dead hogs from a local river before the rotting corpses contaminate the city's major source of drinking water. Since last Wednesday, workers have retrieved more than 100 decomposed pig carcasses, emitting a foul odor that wafts over the local Qiantang River, Hangzhou-based Morning Express reported Sunday.

A worker said that he and his colleagues have spent one week on the river, hauling dead pigs out of the water. "The odor of the decomposing swine is foul and choking. We have no choice but to gulp back the smell and pick them up," an unnamed salvage worker told the newspaper.

It is suspected that farmers living upstream disposed of the dead livestock by throwing the pig remains into the water.

The river, known as the lifeline of Hangzhou, the capital city of Zhejiang Province, provides drinking water for more than 3 million residents living downstream. Tang Haizhen, chief of the salvage team, said that "because of our timely salvage" the dead pigs recovered so far have not polluted the source of drinking water. Tang estimated that it would take the 20 workers four days to collect the floating carcasses and send them to special disposal facilities for treatment to avoid pollution.

EDIT

http://china.globaltimes.cn/society/2010-03/512962.html

[rfranklin]

1. Libertarian utopia...no pesky gubmint regulations...

Of course, we have more techologically advanced pollution-


Spreading problem
Superbug genes are getting into soil and water - will humans be next?
Exclusive from New Scientist magazine
18 April 200

Farmers should stop using antibiotics as growth promoters, say researchers
in the US. They have uncovered evidence of a new route by which dangerous
antibiotic resistance genes can spread.

There is already strong evidence that feeding animals antibiotics can lead to
the emergence of resistant strains of gut bacteria such as salmonella, which
can then be passed on to people in food or through direct contact with
animals.

Now microbiologist Rustam Aminov of the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign and his colleagues have discovered that bacteria in the soil and
groundwater beneath farms seem to be acquiring tetracycline resistance
genes from bacteria originating in pigs' guts.

http://www.newscientist.com/dailynews/news.jsp?id=ns9999640