That is a LOT of money that has to be spent because of the irresponsible actions of the factories surrounding the lake (it is a very big lake). Will any of the companies pay for this cost? This article states More than 70 percent of China’s waterways and 90 percent of its underground water are contaminated by pollution, according to government figures and Since the algae problem surfaced, more than 1,000 petrochemical plants in the cities of Wuxi, Suzhou and Changzhou have closed and 1,600 more factories have been slated to shut down over the next two years, state press reported last month. There is a caution, though issued by Greenpeace that many plants that were closed in other river clean-up campaigns around the country often re-opened again when public attention subsided.

Now it is hard to say exactly what the cost is of China’s environmental catastrophe, despite repeated attempts by the World Bank etc. Even China’s State Environment Protection Agency tried, and once it started getting some accurate predictions, was ordered to stop the ‘Green GDP’ research as it was too embarrassing for certain people. The New York Times details some of the costs ad statistics in an excellent series here. This 14bn example is a pretty clear indication of how much the environmental problem costs in pure dollar terms; let along in the amount of irreversible biological destruction that has been brought about. Of course, any smart person knows that prevention is cheaper than cure, but the amount of money and effort made to enforce China’s environmental laws is pitifully weak. The conspiracy theorist inside me is pretty sure a number of companies are making handsome profits cleaning up the disasters, let alone from creating them!

In typical Chinese style, when environmental activist, Wu Lihong, brought attention to the issue he was first silenced by local officials, then recognised and rewarded by national officials and then silenced again. The government has to recognise that it needs to promote at least some kind of feedback mechanism so that the problems in society can be solved peacefully. Otherwise if it keeps ignoring (or silencing) the issues, they will blow up and not in so peaceful a way as Wu Lihong (the Songhua river incidence comes to mind where it took days before anyone admitted the water was too polluted to drink and then finally just before the water ended up in Harbin, someone admitted the problem and a few million people were supplied with alternative water supplies. But what if the cover-up had succeeded? By sacking the local government head (or whoever else they sacked), they do not solve the long-term issue, which is that there is a culture of hiding bad news that is going to, soon, lead to some major disasters in China, by hindering their early detection.