The pollution of a major river in Wudi County of East China's Shandong Province has local residents worrying about their future.

"We call for an immediate end to pollutant discharging done by enterprises in the upper reaches of the river,'' local resident Kao Haisheng said.

Kao and his neighbours might soon feel some relief as an inspection of enterprises along the upper reaches of the river has been completed and local governments have promised to put an end to further pollution.

The county is located at the far north of Shandong, close to the Bohai Sea. Nearly 80,000 of the 430,000 local residents earn their living from aquatic products breeding, fishing and the salt industry.

Wang Wendong, head of the county bureau for environmental protection, said large quantities of pollutants have drifted down to the county's Zhangweixin River since mid October. The river runs to the Bohai Sea.

Wang said the polluted river water paralyzes local industries such as aquatic breeding and fishing and damages the environment for local residents.

The State Environmental Protection Administration last month organized a team of inspectors to check enterprises along the upper reaches of the Zhangweixin River.

The upper reaches run through Central China's Henan Province, North China's Hebei Province and several cities in Shandong.

Ding Weijian, head of the environment inspection team under the Shandong provincial environmental protection bureau, said pollution of the Zhangweixin River is caused by such enterprises as paper mills and chemical plants in the three provinces.

The inspection team, composed of officials from the three provinces, found that many of the enterprises discharge pollutants illegally.

A majority of polluting enterprises are small paper mills and chemical plants in Xinxiang and Anyang of Henan and Dezhou and Linqing of Shandong, according to inspection team member Zhang Zhimin.

He said local governments have promised to do further investigation and punish the guilty enterprises.

"But how can we be sure the discharge can be stopped forever?'' Wang said.

Water quality in the river is now so bad that "fish and shrimp have died. And water in the river now looks brown and as if it was soy sauce,'' said Yu Qingdong, a local journalist.

Wang worries that the discharge of polluted water from the upper reaches could bring about a similar nightmare to what local people experienced in 2001, when a huge wave of polluted water floated into the county.

That disaster led to a direct loss of more than 500 million yuan (US$60 million) and caused a huge drop in aquatic products and salt output.

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