工業排污屢禁不止 太湖水難清

ZHOUTIE, China — By autumn, the stench of Lake Tai and the freakish green glow of its waters usually fade with the ebbing of the summer heat, but this year is different. Standing on a concrete embankment overlooking a fetid, floating array of plastic bottles, foam takeout containers, flip-flops and the occasional dead fish, Wu Lihong, the lake’s unofficial guardian, shook his head in disgust.

中國周鐵——到了秋季，太湖散發的惡臭，以及湖面怪異的綠光，通常會隨着夏天的熱浪一起褪去，但今年的情況有所不同。一處水泥堤壩正對着的湖面上，漂浮着一片惡臭的雜物，有各種塑料瓶、泡沫飯盒、人字拖鞋，以及少量死魚。太湖的非官方守護者吳立紅搖着頭，臉上露出厭惡的表情。

“If you jumped into this water, you’d shed a layer of skin,” he said one recent afternoon. “The government claims they are cleaning up the lake, but as you can see, it’s just not true.”

“要是掉下去，你會脫掉一層皮，”他在最近一天的下午說。“他們說他們在清理了，不過你自己看吧，不是這樣的。”

Seven years after a toxic algae bloom forced millions of people who depended on the lake to find alternative sources of drinking water, Lake Tai, which straddles two provinces in the Yangtze River delta, remains a pungent symbol of China’s inability to tackle some of its most serious environmental problems.

太湖橫跨長江三角洲的兩個省，是中國的第三大淡水湖。七年前，有毒的藍藻污染危機爆發，數百萬飲用太湖水的居民不得不尋找別的飲用水源。如今，刺鼻的太湖仍然是一個重要的象徵，顯示出中國無法解決某些極爲嚴重的環境問題。

Since the 2007 crisis, which drew widespread domestic news media coverage and prompted a special meeting of the cabinet, the government has spent billions of dollars cleaning up the lake, the country’s third-largest freshwater body. But environmentalists say it has little to show for the money. Hundreds of chemical plants, textile mills and ceramics workshops continue to dump their noxious effluent into the waterways that feed into Lake Tai.

中國新聞媒體廣泛報道了2007年那次危機，國務院也爲此召開了特別會議，自那時以來，政府已經花費了上百億美元來治理太湖污染。但環保人士說，這些錢幾乎看不到效果。數百家化工廠、紡織廠和陶瓷作坊仍然在將有毒污水排入河道，並最終流入太湖。

“Some progress has been made, but we haven’t yet reached a turning point,” said Ma Jun, one of the country’s leading environmentalists. “For many factories, the cost of violating the rules is lower than the cost of compliance.”

“治理工作取得了一些進展，但是還沒有達到拐點，”中國知名環保人士馬軍說。“對於很多工廠而言，違規成本低於守法成本。”

Also unchanged is the persecution of Mr. Wu, 46, a scrappy, self-taught environmentalist who spent three years in jail on what he said were trumped-up fraud charges — punishment, he said, for his dogged campaign against the factory owners and their local government allies, whom he blames for despoiling the lake.

吳立紅遭受迫害的境遇也沒有改變。吳立紅現年46歲，是自學成才的環保人士，行動果斷的他曾經坐過三年牢。他說當局爲了懲罰他而編造了欺詐罪名，原因是他頑強地與工廠老闆及其在當地政府的保護傘做鬥爭。吳立紅說，太湖就是被他們毀掉的。

Since emerging from prison in 2010, Mr. Wu has continued his advocacy work, prompting a predictable response from the authorities. He is subjected to periods of confinement at his home in Zhoutie, a village on Lake Tai. His cellphone is monitored by the police and he is barred from traveling beyond Yixing, the township in eastern Jiangsu Province that includes Zhoutie.

2010年出獄之後，吳立紅繼續投身環保倡導活動。結果不出所料，他時常被軟禁在周鐵鎮的家中，手機遭到警方監聽，除了宜興之外哪裏也不能去。周鐵是太湖邊上的一座小鎮，屬於江蘇省東部的宜興市。

Plainclothes police officers often accompany him on shopping excursions, and surveillance cameras line the narrow road to his home. Vengeful officials, he said, have even stymied his efforts to find a job by warning away would-be employers. “If it wasn’t for the garden in front of my house, I’d probably starve,” said Mr. Wu, a short, pudgy-faced man who often sounds like he is shouting, even when indoors.

他出門購物時，經常有便衣警察跟蹤。在通往他家的狹窄道路上，安裝着一排監控攝像頭。他說，官員們懷恨在心，甚至警告有意向的僱主不要聘用他，讓他找不到工作。“我家前面的菜園裏種了點兒菜，要不我就餓死了，”吳立紅說。他個子不高，臉部圓胖，即使在室內講話，也會聲音洪亮，彷彿是在喊叫。

Reached by phone, an employee of the Zhoutie public security bureau denied that it curtailed Mr. Wu’s freedom.

在接到採訪電話時，周鐵鎮的一名公安人員否認限制了吳立紅的自由。

The experiences of both Lake Tai and Mr. Wu speak volumes about the Chinese government’s often contradictory approach to environmental protection. Confronted by public anger over contaminated air, water and soil, the ruling Communist Party has sought to shutter obsolete steel mills, restrict the number of license plates available to big-city drivers, and recalibrate the economic-growth-at-all-costs criteria used to evaluate local officials. This year, Prime Minister Li Keqiang “declared war” on pollution in a speech to the national legislature.

太湖和吳立紅的經歷，明顯體現了中國政府對待環保時，常常自相矛盾的態度。由於公衆對空氣、水和土壤的污染表達了憤怒，執政的共產黨尋求關閉落後的鋼廠，在大城市對車輛按尾號限行，並調整了考察地方官員政績時，不惜一切代價保障經濟增長的標準。今年，李克強總理在全國人大開幕式上表示，要向污染“宣戰”。

But some local officials oppose policies they fear could close factories and eliminate jobs. They also prefer to deal with environmental problems their own way, if at all, which is why Mr. Wu ran into trouble with officials in Jiangsu, a relatively wealthy slice of coastal China that has prospered from its fecund, well-watered landscape but even more from industrial development, which has fouled the region’s rivers and canals.

但是，一些地方官員反對某些環保政策，因爲他們擔心這些政策可能會導致工廠停工，就業崗位減少。而且即使真的想治理環境，他們也只願意以自己的方式來處理問題，這也正是吳立紅在江蘇遇到麻煩的原因。江蘇是個比較富裕的省份，它的繁榮不僅源自土地豐饒、水源充沛，更重要的是受到了工業發展的推動。但工業發展對這片區域的河流和運河也造成了污染。

Beginning in the mid-1990s, when he began noticing a sickly rainbow hue in the once-pristine creeks near his home, Mr. Wu began a campaign to name and shame polluting factories in Zhoutie. He collected water samples in plastic bottles, wrote letters to high-ranking environmental officials and invited television reporters to film how factories secretly discharged their wastewater at night.

90年代中期，吳立紅開始注意到，他家附近一條曾經清澈的小溪，呈現出了彩虹一般的怪異色彩。於是他發起了一項活動，曝光周鐵那些排放污染的工廠。他用塑料瓶收集水樣，寫信給高級環保官員，並邀請電視臺記者拍攝這些工廠在夜間偷偷排放廢水的情景。

In 2001, after local officials drained and dredged a canal that had been polluted by a dye plant in advance of an inspection tour from Beijing, Mr. Wu exposed their ruse — which included dumping carp into the canal and dispatching villagers with fishing rods to complete the Potemkin image of ecological recovery. In the years that followed, he became something of a media celebrity; in 2005, the National People’s Congress named him an “Environmental Warrior.”

2001年，北京派人來視察時，當地官員提前準備，對一條被染料廠污染的運河進行了排水和清淤處理。爲了製造生態已經恢復的假象，他們還把鯉魚傾倒進這條運河，安排村民拿上魚竿，而吳立紅揭露了他們的僞裝。在隨後的幾年裏，他成爲了媒體名人，2005年，全國人大授予了他“十大環保人物”稱號。

Back in Yixing, which earns 80 percent of its tax revenue from local industry, officials were furious. In 2007, as he was preparing a lawsuit against the environmental bureau, Mr. Wu was arrested and charged with trying to blackmail a company in exchange for withholding accusations of wrongdoing. During his interrogation, Mr. Wu said, he was whipped with willow branches, burned with cigarettes and kept in solitary confinement with little to eat. “The abuse was more than I could take, so of course I signed the confession they had drawn up,” he later said.

但是宜興的官員們怒不可遏。當地80%的財政收入來自工業稅收。2007年，正準備狀告環保局的吳立紅遭到了逮捕，檢察部門指控他企圖把一家公司的不當行爲當作把柄，向其勒索錢財。吳立紅說，審訊時有人用柳條抽打他，還用點燃的菸頭燙他，他被單獨關押，幾乎沒有東西吃。“打得我受不了，那他們叫我籤什麼我就籤什麼嘛，”他後來說。

Elizabeth Economy, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of “The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future,” said environmental activists in China must walk a fine line, knowing when it is safe to push and when it is best to keep quiet. “Wu is a maverick, prone to say exactly what he thinks without considering the political consequences,” she said. “That is not the type of political participation that Beijing desires, even if he is right.”

易明(Elizabeth Economy)是對外關係委員會(Council on Foreign Relations)的高級研究員，著有《一江黑水：中國未來的環境挑戰》(The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future)。她說，中國的環保人士必須有所折衷，知道什麼時候施壓比較安全，什麼時候又最好保持緘默。“吳立紅是個特立獨行的人，心裏怎麼想嘴裏就怎麼說，完全不考慮政治後果，”她說。“即使他佔理，這種人也不是北京喜歡的那類政治參與者。”

That summer, shortly before he was put on trial, the industrial effluent flowing into Lake Tai from the 2,000 factories in the region reached a tipping point, prompting the algae bloom that forced officials in the nearby city of Wuxi to cut off water to two million residents.

那年夏天，就在他的案子審理之前不久，該地區2000家工廠排入太湖的工業廢水量達到了臨界點，導致藍藻危機爆發，附近的無錫市的官員不得不切斷了200萬居民的供水。

Under the glare of a national spotlight, Jiangsu officials said they would spend more than $14 billion to clean up the lake and vowed to address the problem of toxic algae blooms within five years.

此事引起了舉國關注，江蘇省的官員在壓力下表態，他們將投入1000億元資金治理太湖，併發誓在五年內解決有毒藻類氾濫的問題。

But the money, government researchers acknowledge, has had a negligible impact. According to the Lake Tai Basin Authority, 90 percent of water samples taken from the lake this summer were considered so toxic that contact with human skin was ill-advised. Wuxi, in the meantime, has found an alternative source for its drinking water.

不過，政府研究人員承認，這些資金投入收效甚微。太湖流域管理局的資料顯示，今年夏天取自太湖的水樣中，90%存在嚴重毒性，不宜接觸人類皮膚。同時，無錫也找到了飲用水的替代來源。

In a recent interview with Xinhua Daily, Zhang Limin, deputy director of the Lake Tai Water Pollution Prevention Office, said the flood of contaminants had begun to level off, although it is still more than three times as much as the lake can absorb without killing most aquatic life.

張利民是太湖水污染防治辦公室的副主任。近期在接受《新華日報》採訪時，他表示，太湖水質呈現穩中向好態勢，但污染物排放總量仍然超過環境容量，爲不會造成大多數水生物死亡的水平的三倍多。

Flushing the lake with water from the Yangtze River has improved water quality somewhat, though critics say it simply pushes pollution further downstream. These days, many polluters have built pipelines to centralized waste-treatment plants that are incapable of handling the flow. Others simply pipe waste directly into waterways through underground conduits that allow them to avoid detection.

引長江水入太湖的工程令水質有所改善，但批評者表示，這隻會把污染衝到下游。如今有很多排污單位修建了管道，把污水輸送到集中處理的工廠，可是這些地方並不具備相應的處理規模。另有一些排污單位則通過隱蔽的地下管道，直接把廢水偷偷排入水道。

But environmentalists say there is reason for hope. In April, the central government revised the nation’s environmental law for the first time since 1989, imposing steep fines on polluters and requiring companies to disclose pollution data. The regulations, which take effect in January, will also allow environmental groups to file public interest lawsuits against factories that break the law.

一些環保人士覺得還有希望。今年4月，中央政府自1989年以來首次修訂了《環境保護法》，大幅提高了對排污單位的罰款標準，並要求企業披露污染數據。這些監管規定將於明年1月份生效，屆時環保團體也可以對違規工廠提起公益訴訟。

Mr. Ma, the environmentalist, said the new measures include important tools for cleaning up Lake Tai and other ailing bodies of water, but the key would be enforcement. “All it takes is the mayor or the head of a county saying, ‘You can’t touch this factory. It’s too important to the local economy,’ ” he said.

環保人士馬軍表示，《環境保護法》的新增內容爲太湖等受污染水體的治理提供了重要工具，但關鍵在於執行。“只要市長或縣長說一句，‘不能動這個廠，它對地方經濟太重要了，’就會執行不下去，”他說。

Mr. Wu said he was less hopeful, noting how little has changed in recent years despite intense pressure from Beijing and the billions of dollars spent. “A lot of that money ends up lining the pockets of local officials,” he said.

吳立紅說自己抱的希望不大，他指出，最近幾年，儘管有來自北京的重壓，還花費了上千億，但並沒有什麼成效。“好多錢都被當官的給貪了，”他說。

His outspokenness has taken a toll on his family, who have also been subjected to frequent harassment. Last year his daughter, Wu Yunlei, went to the United States on a tourist visa and promptly requested political asylum. “When I was younger, I didn’t understand what my father was doing and I was often angry about the trouble it caused us, but now I’ve come to appreciate it,” she said in an email.

他的剛直已經給家人惹來了麻煩，令他們也經常遭到騷擾。去年，他的女兒吳韻蕾持旅遊簽證抵達美國後，馬上申請了政治庇護。“小時候，我不理解父親的做法，經常生他的氣，因爲那給我們帶來了麻煩，但現在我認同了，”她通過電子郵件接受採訪時寫道。

Once content to focus on the environment, Mr. Wu now believes that healing his beloved lake requires more sweeping change. “If with all their wealth, the Communist Party can’t clean up this lake, it tells you the problem is much bigger,” he said. “I’ve come to realize the root of the problem is the system itself.”

吳立紅原先只關注環境問題，但現在，他認爲，要讓心愛的太湖恢復原貌，就需要進行更加徹底的改變。“如果說花了那麼多錢，共產黨還是治理不了太湖的話，那就有更大的問題了，”他說。“後來我就意識到，這是體制的問題。”