The sun is barely over the horizon the next morning when the visitors jog around a corner and head toward the sidewalk bordering the river. There is a moment of shock.
"Oh, no!"
"What's the matter?" "Look at the river."
"Oh ... "
Many cities of the would became famous because of beautiful rivers that flow through their hearts. In years past, the southern port city of Kaohsiung was also well-known throughout Taiwan for its aesthetic charms. Moreover, its languid waters provided food, transportation, and recreation for the city's residents. For centuries, attractive shoals rich with fish and wildlife bordered the river. During the years of the Ming and Ching Dynasties (1368-1911), the people who slowly crossed the river on their sampans reflected its peacefulness. Residents in the area planted willows along the riverbanks, demonstrating their love of the usually calm tidal waters only occasionally transformed into a raging torrent by runoff from tropical storms. As more people moved into the area, Love River became an increasingly popular location for outdoor sporting activities. Couples and families rented small boats to ply its winding waters, and the annual boat races held during the Dragon Boat Festival brought large crowds to its shores. Children played on the lush river banks, parents and neighbors rested while eating picnic delicacies, and small groups watched the ever-present pairs of chess players.
The source of the river's name remains a subject of friendly contention. For generations there have been of ten told stories about Love River, tying it to the people along its shores. Not surprisingly, frequent themes tell of love and romance. Some tales have unhappy endings, recounting tales of couples who if forbidden by their parents to marry, preferred to drown together in the river and become martyrs to their love. Repeated Instances of variations on this theme recorded in more recent newspaper stories added to the romantic legacy of the river.
Although there are sufficient records to confirm occasional love-suicides, there is a lighter though less picturesque version of the name Oldtimers say that it came from a sign on a rent-a-boat shop. The owner invited a local poet and calligrapher for an appropriate name and sign to place over his new establishment. With liberal application of poetic license, the poet ignored the long-standing name of Kaohsiung Chuan, literally Kaohsiung River, and drew on the popular romantic stories. The result was "Love River Rent-a-Boat," and a new name that caught on with residents.
Whichever story is correct, the river has long been a focus for romantic poems such as,
Green, green the Love River.
Day and night waves shining;
Overcome by romantic scenery.
Couples long for spring boating.
Yet beautiful things are often transient. Not long after the city began its industrial development two decades ago, Love River began an unwelcome transformation. While impressive economic advancements along its shores were changing Kaohsiung from a relatively minor port city into one of the ten largest commercial ports in the world, human, industrial, and agricultural pollution began pouring into its waters in steadily increasing amounts. The price of development was the loss of romantic boating, exciting dragon boat races, successful fishing, and happy picnics.
At night the river still retains some of its beauty, especially if the light breezes are blowing away from visitors to its banks, but during the day there is, alas, another sight. Garbage, sewage, and factory wastes have taken a painful toll. A new story is now told about an attempted suicide in Love River. A couple of years ago a young girl who was distraught because of failure in love jumped into the river, following the path of traditional stories. She failed in her attempt, and deeply regretted her choice of method as well. Newspapers reported that as soon as she hit the water her grief was quickly outweighed by the overwhelming smell and disgusting consistency of the black, muddy river waters. Rescuers saved a slimy and contrite young lady from an unexpectedly turbid tomb.
Upstream pollution sources remain a serious problem.
Chinese historical source record long battles against river problems, many of them centuries old. One of the oldest stories concerns Yu, the legendary founder of the Hsia Dynasty (21st-16th Century B.C.), who succeeded in winning popular support by dredging the Yellow River for the safety and use of his people instead of waging war. He became a model for later rulers by showing the importance of maintaining waterways to prevent floods and providing transportation and irrigation at the same time. The old battles continue today, thousands of years later, but in Kaohsiung the enemy is a modern one: pollution.
Originating from Tsao Kung Chun, an irrigation ditch receiving water from Kao Ping Creek in Kaohsiung County, the 9½ mile Love River does not have enough water now to be self-cleaning. As a result, when the pollution began in earnest two decades ago, the river's quality deteriorated rapidly. As the population increased and more factories appeared in the city limits, there was concomitant expansion in the domestic sewage and industrial waste waters.
In the upper stream area, small iron factories and spray-paint plants quickly dotted the city's newly-established northeastern industrialized zone. Polluting waters from these sources, together with domestic wastes from crudely built apartment buildings lacking modern sanitary facilities, were discharged directly into the river. Before many years passed, residents were treated to an unhappy sight: the river's dark green, heavily polluted waters were augmented by two badly polluted tributaries. One dumped black water from a packing plant, while nearby the other contributed a sickly white effluent, colored by waste bleach from a paper mill. Green, black, and white combined into a swirl of murky grey.
Entering into the middle stream area, a meat transportation company and its neighboring slaughterhouse began adding their own repugnant mix to the river without benefit of any attempt at waste treatment. As if these varieties of pollution mixed with runoff from cow pastures and agricultural land pesticides where not enough, a set of iron and electroplating factories sprang up along the last tributary before the river enters downtown Kaohsiung. And, consistent with other abusers, these began using the river as their "waste water disposal plant. "
In addition to these main sources of pollution, there was a rise in waste oil from ships in Kaohsiung Harbor flowing into the river twice a day during high tide. Before long, the estuary, once clean enough for housewives to wash clothes in, became an oxygen-dead, foul-smelling sewage ditch. The final straw came in 1966, when the popular Dragon Boat competition was marred beyond recovery by the unacceptable conditions of the polluted water. There was widespread disgust, and resignation that the river problem was beyond hope of solution. Love River had become neither loved nor lovely.
Untreated slaughter-house wastes feeding the river.
Not everyone gave up on saving the river, however, including a number of local politicians. After several Kaohsiung city mayors petitioned the Central Government for assistance, eventually US$500,000 was allocated in 1968 for the first efforts at correcting the pollution problems. The expenditures helped, but it was still a case of too little too late. The river pollution was outracing all attempts to correct it. Five years later, Mayor Wang Yu-yun, who had grown up m Kaohsiung, decided soon after taking office to rewrite the river reclamation story. Following a plan devised in 1970, another US$250,000 was spent to reverse the now rapidly deteriorating condition of the river. But the effort failed again. Effective progress began only in 1974, after then Premier Chiang Ching-kuo—now President-directed both the Taiwan Provincial Government and the Kaohsiung City Government to cooperate in solving the growing pollution hazards.
This push from the highest administrative level created a healthy momentum in what was to become a long fight with a complex series of problems. After studying several alternatives, a US$120 million program was selected and approved. The proposed "Combined Sewerage Development And Love River Reclamation for Pollution Control" became the overall plan of attack.
A new interceptor station—preventing solid waste pollution.
The project was divided into constructing both rain and sewage disposal systems. Due to financial limitations, priority was given to the more badly needed sewerage system. This was scheduled to be finished in 1986. With a combined yearly budget allocated by the Central, Taiwan Provincial, and Kaohsiung City Governments, the construction work began in earnest in 1979, following five years of extensive design work. The second stage, beginning this year, will continue extending the collection system to cover major industries in the collection area, and will undertake major reclamation projects. These include riverbed dredging, construction of interceptor stations, and riverbank repair and beautification. The third stage plan will cover the least developed parts of the area, complete the final sections of the sewerage system, build river-related recreational areas, and initiate long-term water quality management programs that encompass water testing methodologies, revised legal procedures to prosecute polluters, and public awareness education projects.
Only two months after the first stage of construction was completed in December 1986, a change in the river's water was already noticeable. First, there was a shift in color from black to gray to light gray. Then, during the Chinese Lunar New Year holidays last February, people claimed seeing an occasional fish, some crabs, and even a few hardy shrimp. Officials were overjoyed at the reports and two official inspection tours were held, during which the city government formally announced the success of the Love River reclamation. Newsmen, councilmen, city government officials, and distinguished foreign guests were invited to witness the events, which included concerts, dancing and singing, and plenty of food.
Recently completed trunk sewer line tested successfully.
The events attracted huge crowds, who flocked to the river's banks with great excitement and happiness. The festive air was enhanced by one city councilman who leaped into the water to testify to the degree of the river's cleanliness. "The river has been revived! The water is almost as clean as before, and it isn't stinky any more," he shouted to the people standing nearby. Then, to the amazement of all, he pulled a live crab from his suitcoat pocket—proof either of the success of river reclamation or of careful advance planning, an issue still being debated in the press.
Kaohsiung citizens are fully aware that their fiver has only begun the process of recovery. But the excitement generated by the progress so far is genuine, and to the credit of community leaders, teachers, and other concerned citizens, there is growing popular sentiment for upgrading public perception of conservation issues. Schoolchildren have entered essay and art contests about the river, TV and movie stars have appeared at public events to encourage more public attention to the pollution issues, and the news media continues to report on the process of fiver reclamation. Another sign of popular support came recently when couples who registered to attend a city-government-held group wedding asked the mayor to move the ceremony from City Hall to the fiver. "Big-Head" Su accepted with gusto: "Las Vegas, Nevada can be a worldwide center for divorce, why can't I make my city a center for weddings'!"
The bachelor mayor has many plans for the revived river. Drawing on French and British examples, the government is creating a wide range of designs to transform the riverbanks into an area more in line with the river's name. "We plan to do this in two ways," explains Huang Lin-Shyang, director of the city government's Construction Bureau. "On the river itself, we plan to have many kinds of activities, such as small boats for couples, larger vessels for tourists, and fishing and sailing. The riverbanks will be planted with trees and flowers, and enriched by various recreational facilities. There will be narrow parklanes with cafes, tea pavilions, and outdoor art galleries like Montmartre beside the Seine." A moment later he enthusiastically launches into an explanation of another series of projects he has in mind, leaving the distinct impression that the city government, no less than the citizens, has reached a stage of dynamic concern about the river's development.
The mayor believes that the river belongs to each of the citizens and has encouraged public participation in the clean-up process. "City affairs are and must be human," he says. "The city government is here to provide a better and more comfortable environment for its citizens." The residents of Kaohsiung are relieved as much as pleased with the changes in Love River. "Spring has come very late," a former rent-a-boat shop owner says of the river reclamation work. As a particularly concerned and helpless witness of the river's decline and near destruction over the past two decades, the new signs of recovery prompt a satisfied, though somewhat tentative, smile. In many ways, this says it all.
Kaohsiung Conservation Movement Well Under Way.
Kaohsiung, located in southwestern Taiwan, is a rapidly growing international port city and business center with an area of 60 square miles and a population close to 1.5 million.
A small fishing village some three hundred years ago, it developed into a commercial port as early as 1860 today, following 30 years of soaring economic development, the city boasts the world's fifth largest container port with an annual cargo volume exceeding 150 million tons in 1979 it was given the status of a special municipality under the jurisdiction of the Executive Yuan.
Unfortunately, during the city's breakneck development toward becoming the island's biggest port and major center of heavy industry, construction of some basic infrastructure failed to keep pace. One of the more serious omissions was adequate sewerage and waste treatment facilities. Factories, commercial buildings, and private dwellings discharged their sewage to the nearest storm water drains, drainage ditch, or watercourse—most of which finally led to the river. While this was a convenient and cost-effective process in earlier times, the river-as-drainage ditch became increasingly unacceptable to residents as their environmental concerns increased in tandem with the smell of the turbid waters that ran through the most developed sections of the city.
Governmental recognition of the problem soon joined citizen criticisms of the river's sad state. A "Save-the-Love-River" movement that began in 1968 evolved by 1978 into an eight-year battle against the river's pollution and its contributions to degrading the city's environment The first stage of the clean-up project, finished last year, progressed smoothly under the administrations of five successive mayors. There has been significant initial success, for the river's appearance has already changed noticeably from a sludgy black to a lighter gray. Local politicians have formally announced the solution of the river's problems, although additional stages of reclamation remain ahead.
Nevertheless, the optimism is warranted, for the citizens and government of Kaohslung are not only cleaning up an important historical and aesthetic resource, they are also demonstrating a new island-wide mood of environmental awareness. Seen in this light, the enthusiasm of incumbent Mayor Su Nan-cheng is understandable: "This is not only a reclamation of a river; this is done for generations of Kaohsiung citizens".