It's not just dead pigs threatening China's waterways. There are also "trash mountains" to worry about.

That what the Chinese media has taken to calling towering heaps of trash, like the 23,000-sq. meter pile in Hebei province (link in Chinese) that sits parlously close to Beijing's water supply.

And though the trash mountain is no longer in use, local NGOs believe that the runoff of things like heavy metal and medical waste--what the villagers memorably call "trash soup"--now contaminate the reservoir and the surrounding soil.

Plus, the carcasses of pigs and chickens have attracted flocks of crows, which then destroy local crops as well. It's also just gross. The villagers say that in the summer, it attracts so many swarms of flies that "they turn white walls to black."

The one in Hebei might be the Everest of trash mountains, but China has many more. Just a day earlier, the Beijing Times reported on an eight-story-high trash mountain (link in Chinese) on the outskirts of Chaoyang district, in central Beijing, mostly made of construction waste (here's a good photo of the mountain). Residents complain that they can't open their windows when at home, and risk facing blinding dirt-storms when outside. The day before, the media reported on another,this one in Hangzhou. Last fall, a trash mountain in Lanzhou collapsed, burying a scavenger alive (link in Chinese). And here's video of another.