Luohe's prestigious position in China's food industry is dependent on several factors, but a clean natural environment is the most important one.

It's simple, according to Bai Hongxi, a director with the city's environment protection bureau: "We're a major food producer, and people expect food producers to be clean. An untidy setting won't get you very far."

Its new core vision in becoming an environmentally friendly city in the midland region is a result of unique advantages, including its well-rounded industrial structure, headed by light industry; a flatland geography, which makes pollution treatment simpler compared with mountainous areas; a medium-sized city scale; and proper water treatment.

Environment protection hasn't always been a top priority in Luohe, but administrators have recently learned to place it above economic investment, Bai said.

The early 1990s was a golden period for polluting enterprises in the city. Over 100 paper mills operated day and night, discharging sewage into the Sha and Li rivers, the two main branches of the central Huai River that snakes through Luohe.

But with more than a decade of collective effort, local chemical oxygen demand (COD), a crucial indicator of water pollutants, was reduced from 109,800 tons in 1993 to 26,500 tons in 2006, setting a fine example for other branches of the Huai River. Today, Yinge Industrial Corporation, among the nation's top 10 in the field and recognized for the measures it took to cut water pollution, remains the only papermaking group in Luohe.

As Luohe's successful battle against pollution draws public attention, it has also stepped up actions toward building a national environment protection model city. To date, Luohe has already accomplished 19 of the 32 indicators set out by the state environmental protection administration and is close to realizing another eight.

"We're still lagging behind in a number of important indexes, including the utilization rate of clean energy, central heating and urban sewage treatment, all of which will take significant time and effort," Bai said.

(China Daily 10/19/2007 page26)