Greening a city with landfill

[Photo: from VCG]

The Garden expo, a key attraction in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei province, is lush and surrounded by flowers in April.

Zhang Huaqing, 70, strolls here with his wife every day. To him and many local residents, the fresh air and clean water are beyond imagination as the original site of the expo had been a landfill for almost two decades.

"The sewage flooded everywhere with strong odor. In summer, the mosquitoes were all over the sky and we always had to keep the windows and doors closed. Many times we had wanted to move away," Zhang said.

The Jinkou landfill, covering 46 hectares, was opened in 1989 in suburban Wuhan as a result of the fast growth of the urban population and household refuse.

Before it was closed in 2005, the landfill had dealt with more than 5 million cubic meters of garbage -- about 3.76 million tonnes. Even after its shutdown, environmental issues continued to surface, including gas pollution, liquid infiltration and damage to the landscape.

A restoration project put up on the agenda accordingly. In 2012, Wuhan proposed restoring the site and rebuilding it as the main venue for the expo. The idea was approved and Wuhan was granted host of the 10th China International Garden Expo, according to Xiao Qinwu, engineer at the expo.

[The audio clip is from Studio+, produced by CRI] 

(Source: China Daily)