Blue water for Green Olympics – part I
One year ahead the Olympics Games, the main concern of the organizing commitee (the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games) is not hight-level performances during competition or infrastructures building up on time.
A model for all of China
The main concern is what kind of city environment athletes will find? What sort of water will be supplied to the public? Those questions are not recent as they had been asked years ago, when Beijing knew it was choosed for organizing the 2008 OG. But this concern emerged since few weeks because of the worry of sportsmen. Some are afraid of the environment conditions in which they are going to compete (polluted air and not potable water), thinking it could have impact on their performances. But China wants to show to the world its credentials and the BOCOG has invested a lot for that: the Olympic Games would be an environmental model for Beijing and China. Making “Green olympics” is one of the 3 goals the BOCOG has set up.
The emblem for the Environment of the 2008 OG in Beijing
New water facilities
In November 2005, the BOCOG and the United Nations Environment Programme signed a Memorandum of Understanding, which aims to ensure that the OG will take place according to environmental account, especially for water quality improvements. The city of Beijing has made great investments for updating and building water and wastewater treatment plants: in the urban aera, 15 wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) have been rehabilited or built. 9 of them have been upgraded with a tertiary treatment process recycling water.
(source: Pr. Jiang Zhanpeng/Tsinhua University)
Those upgrades are one of the answers to the water shortage issue in Beijing: the recycled water will be used for non-potable purposes. In addition to those infrastructures, about 4000kms of sewer pipes will be laid. Thus, the sanitation system will improve the wastewater collection that expect to reach 2.5millions tons of wastewater discharge in a day, only for the urban aera of Beijing. In 2006, officially only 52% of wastewater wre collected and treated, but thanks to the municipals WWTP, this rate is expecting to raise to 90% with the treatment of more than 4 millions m3/day. 50% of this water will be reused for irrigation and ensure the water supply of ponds and lagoons in the Olympic village; formally, the rate barely reached 15%.
Official site of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games: http://en.beijing2008.cn/
UNEP site for Olmypic Games Partnership: http://www.unep.org/sport_env/Olympic_Games/index.asp