2-Month Closure Of Factories, Powerplants May Clean Olympic Air In Beijing

[hatrack]

BEIJING: As Beijing gears up to host the 2008 Olympics, officials are planning a host of stringent measures to clear the city’s badly polluted air – if only for the few weeks the world’s elite athletes are in town. A key element of the plan is to force drivers to leave their cars at home during the Games, the Beijing’s Environmental Protection Agency director in charge of air quality, Wang Dawei, told AFP in an interview.

In addition, for a two-month period around the Games, all construction work will cease, polluting factories and power plants will be closed down, and roads will be sprayed with water and swept several times a day, he said. China will even generate occasional rainfall during the period to help wash suspended particles from the skies, using airplanes and rockets to fire silver iodine or liquid nitrogen into gathering clouds to help induce rain. “With all the measures we are preparing, I am very confident the air quality will be high during the Olympics. It will not be a problem at all,” Wang said. His comments come amid lingering concerns within the International Olympic Committee about the city’s pollution woes, even as most other preparations for the 2008 Games look to be well on track.

“There are environment problems. But our Chinese friends are doing everything to prevent that and to find solutions,” IOC president Jacques Rogge said in Seoul on Wednesday. Indeed, visitors to Beijing are often shocked to find the city’s historic tourist sites and fast-rising skyline can often only be viewed through a thick haze. City officials have a “blue sky day” count, and are aiming for 292 such days each year. However that number was just 234 last year, according to what some residents believe is already an overly optimistic official count, and the situation appeared to worsen at the start of 2006. The local government officially recorded 20 days as being “polluted” or “seriously polluted” in January, the worst levels for the month in six years. In November last year, environmental officials warned Beijing residents to stay home because of the dangerously high levels of air pollution.

Natural factors contribute to the poor air quality in the region, with dust and sandstorms regularly sweeping across the country’s arid northern plains. But one of the most pressing newer problems has been the huge increase in the number of cars on the city’s roads. Last year more than 1,000 new cars were sold a day in Beijing, bringing the city’s total to 2.6 million, and that figure is expected to top 3.5 million by the time of the Olympics. Wang said a top priority for the government was to keep the majority of these vehicles off the road during the Games.

EDIT

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006%5C04%5C07%5Cstory_7-4-2006_pg2_13

[phantom power]

1. Wow... A Potemkin atmosphere

[htuttle]

2. "We have to air this place out before the World gets here!"

(Cough cough)

"Send everyone home! Open some windows!"

(Cough cough)

[Warpy]

3. They're going to have to figure out how to get Chinese yuppies

out of their cars and off their scooters and back onto bicycles. Good luck to them and the Red Sox.

At least all those coal fires won't be heating homes during the summer. That should help a bit.

[NNadir]

4. The liquid nitrogen is peeing in the wind.

I suspect that running the plants to make it will make more pollution than any putative rain will eliminate.

As I recall, silver iodide doesn't work all that well either.