BEIJING (Caixin Online) — In Sanbao Town, the water isn’t safe to drink anymore. After a light rain on June 11, Lu Jicai took his sheep into the mountains, located by the Nanpan River Basin. The sheep drank from a pond and soon began bleating. That night, Lu’s wife made an inventory. Of the 51 sheep on the mountain that day, 38 had died and 13 were on the verge of death. A veterinarian at the local Animal Husbandry Station determined that the sheep had been poisoned.

After discovering that the chromium slag had been dumped in Sanbao, Qujing environmental authorities discovered more chromium slag heaps in nearby towns and villages, a total of more than 5,000 tons. The investigation found that the toxic waste had been dumped on the banks of the river by two men working for an unlicensed waste-disposal company that were contracted by a chemical manufacturer to transport and process the waste.

An investigation by the local environmental protection bureau found that the sheep had been poisoned with hexavalent chromium. Hexavalent chromium is easily absorbed by the body, causing vomiting, abdominal pain, dermatitis and eczema. Short-term and long-term contact or inhalation poses a cancer risk. At the pond where the sheep drank, investigators found numerous pieces of black chromium slag. In the rain, the highly toxic elements in the slag had washed into the pond.

More chromium slag was discovered in the mountains of Zhangjiaying Village in the following month.

Pollution out of control

On Aug. 13, a notice from the Qujing government stated that the illegally dumped chromium slag had come from Yunnan Luliang Chemical Industry. The company had signed a chromium slag transport agreement with Guizhou Xingyi Sanli Fuel. To save on transportation costs, two transport workers from the company, Wu Xinghuai and Liu Xingshui, dumped more than 140 trucks worth of highly toxic chromium slag in the mountains near Qujing, a total of 5,222 tons.

Luliang Chemical is the only chromium chemical production company in Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi provinces. A large amount of chromium slag is generated in the production process, most of which is simply piled on the ground around the plant.

When open chromium dumps are soaked with rain and snow, the hexavalent chromium leaches into groundwater or rivers. Since the 1950s, some 70 sodium-chromate chemical companies have been founded in China, all of which have been very profitable but created serious pollution.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Chinese government began attaching importance to controls on chromium slag pollution. The government overhauled the chromium-salt industry, progressively shutting down or merging more than 40 chromium-salt enterprises. But even after the factories were shuttered, the “orphan” slag heaps remained. More than six million tons of chromium slag remains in some 20 Chinese cities, including Shanghai and Tianjin.

In 2005, the State Council issued a nationwide notice requiring that all historical stockpiles of chromium slag be safely disposed of by the completion of the 11th Five-Year Plan. But to date, this task remains incomplete.

When processing hazardous waste, if the waste needs to be transported out of the factory area, a qualified disposal company must first be found and environmental authorities must write out a receipt of the transaction.

Luliang Chemical President Tang Zaiyang says that the slag heap has been around since the factory’s founding more than 20 years ago. In order to speed up its processing, Luliang Chemical began looking for a company able to treat the chromium slag earlier this year.

Luliang Vice President Zuo Xianglin, who handled the matter, showed Caixin a “Chromium slag supply contract,” which stated that Guizhou Sanli would be responsible for transporting and treating the chromium slag. Luliang Chemical undertook the 100-yuan ($15.70) per ton freight fee. If an accident occurred during the transport process, Guizhou Sanli would be responsible.

“This is an invalid contract!” a worker at the Qujing Prefecture Environmental Protection Bureau told Caixin. The reason: Guizhou Sanli is not certified to dispose of chromium slag.

A higher-up at Guizhou Sanli surnamed Xu told Caixin that the contract showed only “intent.” “Later we discovered we couldn’t do the safety treatment. The cost was too high. There was also no value in refining it. Afterward, we just didn’t pick it up. The contract was not implemented, and we didn’t send trucks.”

Unemployed farmers Wu and Liu occasionally heard a friend, who drove a loader for Luliang Chemical, say that there was a lot of slag at the factory that needed to be transported out, that the factory paid for the transport, and the slag could then be sold. Wu thought the business could be lucrative, so he took over the business from his friend.

According to Liu’s account to public security officials, the two discovered that Luliang Chemical’s 100-yuan-per-ton freight fee was insufficient to cover costs. The two decided simply to dump the slag and pocket the 100 yuan per ton. Wu and Liu hired 11 drivers to take the more than 5,000 tons of slag into the mountains. The two pocketed 65 yuan per ton after other costs. Both were later arrested.

When the cleanup was completed on June 17, the Qujing government said that 9,130 tons of slag and polluted soil had been cleared and returned to the special dumpsite at Luliang Chemical.

According to the Yunnan Provincial Environmental Protection Bureau, no hexavalent chromium has been detected in the water where the Nanpan exits Yunnan.

But a survey conducted by the Chinese office of the international environmental protection group Greenpeace on water quality in areas around the factory found high concentrations of the toxic chemical hexavalent chromium in groundwater near the chromium dumps.

According to the group’s report published on Aug. 30, groundwater in the southeast of Luliang Chemical was found to contain hexavalent chromium 242 times above the safety standard. The level was 126 times above the safety standard for water in rice paddies within the region, while concentrations in the Nanpan River near the factory, where farmers draw water for irrigation, were also two times higher than the standard.

Prevalence of cancer

Around Xinglong, Caixin reporters noted other polluting industries in the Luliang Chemical factory area, including paper mills and smelters. The Nanpan River, which flows through the region, is a main tributary of the Pearl River in Guangdong province. A polluted Nanpan would directly affect the downstream water quality in Guangdong and the Pearl River Basin.

In 2007, former village party secretary for Xinglong Village drafted a resolution stating that the number of cancer patients in Xinglong was on the rise due to booming industrial pollution.

But officials from the Luliang County Environmental Protection Bureau said that while water and air quality did not meet standards, a higher incidence in cancer rates could not be linked to discharge from nearby factories.

Villager Wang Kongxiang told Caixin that the number of cancer cases in the village had increased sharply in recent years. The people there mainly drink river water and well water.

“The water in the Nanpan stinks. We’re afraid even to use it for farming. The pollution is plain to see.” Wang said.

Xinglong originally produced high-quality rice, livestock and fruit. Today, not only is production rapidly declining, but villagers cannot sell their products.

“We use the Nanpan to irrigate our crops here. We don’t eat them ourselves. We sell them all to people in the city and officials to eat.” said a villager named Yuan Chaoqi. See this report at Caixin Online.