This morning's online
Times has an article on Chinese algae. Excerpts follow, then a link to the entire article:
To Save Olympic Sailing Races, China Fights Algae
A barge at Qingdao, site of the Olympic sailing regatta in August, was surrounded by algae last week. The Chinese have begun a huge cleanup effort. (EyePress, via Associated Press)
By JIM YARDLEY
Published: July 1, 2008
BEIJING — With less than six weeks before it plays host to the Olympic sailing regatta, the city of Qingdao, China, has mobilized thousands of people and an armada of small boats to clean up an algal bloom choking the coastline and threatening to impede the competition.
Local officials have begun an intense effort to clean up the algae by mid-July. News reports estimate as many as 20,000 people have either volunteered or been ordered to participate in the operation [I'm guessing been ordered],
while 1,000 boats are scooping algae out of the Yellow Sea. . . .
Algae blooms now affect more than 5,000 square miles of seawater, Xinhua reported.
“We will make all our efforts to finish this job,” said a propaganda official in Qingdao, who asked not to be named because of the political delicacy of the issue [also because Beijing is cracking down on propaganda officials who misspeak, terminating them--with a bullet to the back of the head after a show trial].
“Now, forces from the entire province have become involved.” He said ships and boats have been dispatched from two other coastal cities, Rizhao and Yantai, to help haul away the algae.
Yuan Zhiping, an official with the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Committee, said Sunday that the government would try to block algae from floating into the Olympic sailing area by installing in the sea a fenced perimeter more than 30 miles long. [See "Bigger Europe" thread.] . . .
The massive outbreak comes with some sailing teams already in Qingdao preparing for the Olympics. Photographs in the Australian news media showed an Australian team seemingly stuck in a carpet of algae during a training run. [Or so it seemed, relative to an American team training nearby.
Whoops
U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
:p
] . . .
Air quality remains a serious concern in Beijing. On Tuesday the city will begin removing 300,000 high-polluting vehicles, mostly trucks, from local roads. Later in July the city will institute temporary restrictions to remove half of all motor vehicles from the streets.
But air quality remains such a large problem that officials are also preparing contingency plans that could force factories across much of northern China to close temporarily if conditions warrant. [Great. First gas prices, then food prices. Now Wally World prices.]
Full article