Photo: Greenpeace

In the very recent memory of Tom Beeke, a passionate Canadian birder, Dalian’s Jinshitan resort was still his land of discovery. Tom got a job as English teacher at Dalian Maple Leaf International School several years ago. Besides living close to the sandy beach, it was also a great treat being able to venture around Jishintan coast, bushes and wetlands to watch birds.  This summer, Tom’s new book, Birds of Dalian, hit the local book market.

Dalian, located on the East Asia-Pacific Flyway of migratory birds, is an important stopover site for birds migrating between Siberia and Australia. For those birds, who are now in Siberia, their journeys south will soon start.  For this year’s new chicks, their first ever encounter with the coasts, islands and the sea around Dalian will begin one month later. (more…)

Zhong Yu of Greenpeace bears witness to the Dalian oil spill (Photo: Greenpeace)

Twenty-two years ago, when my high school classmates unfolded a banner with the words “Save Our Seas!”, we put the Greenpeace logo on the banner.  At that time, we were protesting marine debris littering the coasts of Dalian.

Now, twenty-two years since that unofficial Greenpeace banner hung in 1988, Dalian received its first official support from Greenpeace with the deployment of several Greenpeace teams to respond to the massive oil spill in Dalian.

Zhong Yu, senior action coordinator with Greenpeace China, was not prepared for what she saw nor for what she would encounter.  Like many clean up workers and local fishermen, Zhong did not wear protective gear when she walked into thick crude oil along the beach. The photo of her wearing a red Greenpeace T-shirt and blue jeans was the first telling image from Greenpeace bearing witness to the Dalian disaster. (more…)

Firefighters responding to the scene of the Oil spill in Dalian, China (Photo from Netease)

To Chinese firefighter Jiang Hui, his Darley fire truck was his darling. Jiang had been a driver with a $1 million fire truck since his unit purchased it three years ago, and he liked this American brand.

Jiang was among the earliest squads to reach the burning and smoky scene in Dalian. While shooting water and foam to the fire, the blazing crude oil quickly rushed near their feet. The tires of the fire truck caught fire.  Jiang jumped into the truck and tried to move it, but the flame started to engulf the fire truck.  Another firefighter ran to the truck’s front side, pulled Jiang out of the cabin and dragged him away.

The heat was too hot to bear. While some firefighters shot water canons towards the burning oil tanker, others had to shoot water towards the front line of firefighters to cool them down.

“Water, Water!”, “Foam!” were the shouts of the firefighters mixed with the sounds of continuous explosions and blazing noise of fireballs.

A Dalian TV cameraman, Lu Jianwei, captured a short conversation of a firefighter, later identified as Xu Zhiyou, talking to his wife over the cell phone. “Dear, I might not be back, treat mom well, treat our child well!”  On the other side of the line, his wife must have asked why. “Don’t ask, no time, I will stop here.” Then he turned off the phone and rushed towards the fire. (more…)

Site of explosion - Dalian New Port

When firefighter Sang Wu got the assignment from his director, Sang could see the tears welling in the director’s eyes. His assignment was to turn off the valves of the oil tanks, each containing 100,000 cube meters of crude oil, which were fueling the flaming pipelines.  This was the scene on the night of July 16^th, 2010, in Dalian New Port where the oil pipeline exploded. Sang Wu and his two other fellow fire fighters might have just accepted a suicide mission.

Because of the explosion and the fire, the electricity to the port was cut off. Turning off the valve was a tiresome endeavor. What would normally take just a few seconds, would take Sang and his teammates 80,000 turns manually. After turning the wheels 320,000 rounds in total, Sang and his teammates sealed off the valves of four of the closest oil tanks after eight hours of labor.

Throughout the night of July 16^th, over 2,000 firefighters from 14 major cities of Liaoning province raced to the scene of explosion. The site is a base for storage of crude oil and chemicals. Fifty-one toxic chemical tankers were linked up in the area near the explosion.  The closest tanker was less than 100 meters away from the burning old tanker.  If it had not been for the courageous actions of the firefighters, the tankers could have exploded and the city of Dalian may have simply turned into another Bhopal.

Dalian oil pipeline explosion and spill

On July 16, an oil pipeline in Dalian, owned and operated by ChinaPetrol Group exploded while loading oil off a Libyan tanker.

The Financial Times reported today, “The disaster began last Friday, when two pipelines exploded as high-sulphur crude was being unloaded from a Libyan tanker. State media said firefighters were on the scene within three minutes and more than 2,000 firefighters were deployed to battle the blaze, which raged through Saturday morning.”

According to Chinese media report, the explosion has caused 1500 tons of oil to spill, reaching an ocean area of 50km with pollution likely to spread to 100km.  John Amos from SkyTruth made the above satellite image of the Dalian Spill. (more…)

Originally posted on ChinaDialogue.net

Since late June, almost 1000 American consumers have written letters to Steve Jobs and Apple’s Public Relations Department urging them to address concerns of China’s Green Choice Alliance regarding heavy metal pollution from suppliers in China.

The IT industry is well known for its toxic legacy in its disposal cycle, but little attention has been paid to the environmental impacts of its production. In 2009, more than 4000 people, mostly children, were afflicted with lead poisoning in China inspiring the Green Choice Alliance to initiate a campaign to clean up multinational’s IT supply chains.  The Alliance is taking action where the government is unable to, namely targeting brand-conscious multinationals to attract public and media attention to the cause. (more…)

Recently we reported on 34 Chinese NGOs writing to 29 multinational IT companies regarding companies in the supply chain who are found to be in violation of environmental regulations in China. These letters cited specific suppliers to these IT companies and their specific environmental violations according to Chinese government reports. In these letters, we requested that the IT companies, including Apple, IBM and Sony, to verify the information and commit to actions to address these violations.

Among the 29 companies, eight have chosen not to respond. Pacific Environment tried to contact two U.S. companies that did not respond: Apple and IBM. Both have responded without addressing the key questions and concerns raised in the letters.

On June 5^th, these NGOs published a second report regarding the status of these companies’ response. Read the report (English) here and stay tuned for further updates from us.

You can also get updates through our Twitter page here: http://twitter.com/pacenvironment

Water Pollution in China, Ao River

In early April, 34 Chinese environmental NGOs wrote letters to 29 IT companies regarding members of their supply chains violating Chinese environmental laws and regulations. The list included suppliers for global brands like Apple, IBM, Intel, Sony and Lenova.

Ten days of mostly silence on the part of these companies led to a press conference that attracted widespread media attention and finally some responses. According to an insider source, some companies claimed that these violations took place before they became buyers; others made vague promises of investigations and redress. Hundreds of letters and phone calls are being exchanged between the parties and much work is still needed to be done. (more…)

Xiu and Yang are on a three-week field visit in China. They are currently visiting Green Camel Bell in Gansu Province. Here’s clip of what they’ve been up to. Check it out:

Ran Liping, Green Camel Bell’s Water Program staff is introducing the town of Lingxia, an ethnic Hui-dominated city that is currently listed as Medium Level polluted in China’s Air Pollution Index. We are visiting this area to find out more about five of the polluting enterprises listed by Gansu Environmental Protection Agency and how they are affecting the area people’s lives.