China's Yangtze River Turns Red

redletterdave writes "The Yangtze River, the third longest river in the world traditionally known as the 'golden watercourse,' mysteriously blushed for the first time on Sept. 6. Residents in the surrounding area near the city of Chongqing, where the Yangtze connects to the Jialin River, literally stopped in their tracks when they noticed their once golden river had turned a shocking shade of red. Residents have carefully crept down to the riverbanks for the past few days to save some of the red, tomato juice-like river water in bottles. Early predictions from scientists say the red water was likely a result of pollution, but investigators are still investigating the unknown cause."

Comments

Red?

[WD]

Maybe my eyes need to be checked, but it looks brown to me.

Ukraine

[roman_mir]

Here is a picture that I remember from way back - this is a red river in the city of Zaporizhia in Ukraine, this city has (or had) a number of factories, smelters, motor factories, I think most of them were just dumping the waste right into Dnepr (the main river in Ukraine) and then all that water flows into the Black sea.

That's nothing serious

[dkleinsc]

I'm from Cleveland. Call me when the Yangste is on fire.

Re:That's nothing serious

[desertfool]

Came here to say this. The Cuyahoga caught fire in 1969. How long will it take China to start taking their environment seriously? I can't believe that they would let this go on forever, but it isn't a democracy and money makes people blind to the effects of their actions.

Re:That's nothing serious

[fustakrakich]

Seems to me a good way to catch your fish precooked...

Re:That's nothing serious

[TapeCutter]

How long will it take China to start taking their environment seriously?

China's environmental record is similar to the US in that it is full of contradictions. Look up the Loose (sic?) plateau in NW China, it's an area the size of France that 20yrs ago looked like an Afghan desert and today is one of the world's largest apple producing regions, goats are now fenced in, the hills now have trees and wild life, the land has stopped eroding away faster than anywhere else on earth, locals were given land to farm in exchange for caring for it in the prescribed manner, and the average income of the locals has quadrupled (after taking inflation into account). The entire thing cost $500M and was done with hand tools using local labor. However these were all secondary aims of the project, the primary aim of the project was to stop silt filling up the three gorges dam. ;)

Sounds like a red tide

[Grayhand]

There are chemicals that can cause it but the other option is all the fertilizer resulted in a red tide, a type of algae. For wildlife it's as bad or worse than a chemical spill. The blooms can come on suddenly and should fade once the food source gets used up.

Re:Some photos obviously enhanced

[TaoPhoenix]

I'm so upset that I didn't even bother to read more than a few sentences of the article given the topic we're having.
"Nobody is quite sure what caused the color change."

So in the rush to get there first with the reporting race, someone couldn't be bothered to give a college chem lab student lunch and an hour to get a chemical composition of the water? Oh, right, that would actually take journalism work.

Re:Some photos obviously enhanced

[Anonymous Coward]

The same already photoshopped picture is available from both China Foto Press and Barcroft Media, which are credited in the Daily Mail picture. Sloppy screening on the Daily Mail's behalf, but the image manipulation appears to originate closer to the source.

Re:Some photos obviously enhanced

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It's a lousy Photoshop job. Zoom in on the lower part of the picture. You can clearly see the bad strokes made by the person who did the "enhancement".