Who is the guardian of Huaihe River?

Huo Daishan is the founder of the non-governmental environmental protection organization "Defender of Huaihe River".

Since 2004, Huo Daishan has successively become a candidate for "Top Ten Legal Figures" of CCTV, and won the titles of "Top Ten Social Welfare Stars in China", "Outstanding Environmental Protection Figures in China" and "Top Ten Contributors in the First China Ecological Well-off Forum". At the end of 2007, he won the individual award of "2007 Green China Person of the Year".

Huo Daishan used to be a photojournalist. He quit his job to investigate the pollution problem of the Huaihe River and walked alone through more than 20 counties and cities along the Huaihe River, covering a journey of more than 4,000 kilometers from the source to the end of the Huaihe River. At his own expense, he shot more than 5000 water pollution works in Huaihe River Basin/KLOC-0. He volunteered to publicize environmental protection knowledge to farmers on both sides of the Huaihe River, held photo exhibitions and lectures all over the country, and frequently appealed to save the Huaihe River all over the country. 1999, he took a photo of a middle school student who had to wear a mask in class by the Sha Ying River, which was reprinted by many domestic media. This photo exposed the lie of Huaihe River pollution control standard to the whole country. In 2000, his photo of "cancer villages caused by pollution" attracted the attention of the outside world to the pollution of Shaying River, so the Huaihe River returned to its starting point after 10 years of pollution control. His efforts have attracted great attention from the government and environmental protection organizations at home and abroad, thus strengthening the governance of the Huaihe River. Under his supervision, a number of enterprises with high energy consumption, high pollution and illegal discharge were shut down and rectified by the government; At his appeal, the government allocated special funds to dig deep wells and install water filters in villages in polluted areas.

From June 5438 to October 2003 10, he founded the first non-governmental environmental protection organization "Huaihe Guardian" in Huaihe River Basin, and established the "Huaihe System Environmental Science Research Center" to monitor the water quality of Huaihe River for many years. 10 For many years, he spent more than 200,000 yuan of family savings and invested in various environmental protection activities for water pollution control in Huaihe River. The State Environmental Protection Administration called Huodaishan their "eyes of Huaihe River".

Huo Daishan is from shenqiu county, Zhoukou City, Henan Province. Shenqiu used to be a demonstration area for irrigation projects. As long as the gate is opened, the water of Shaying River can flow to every piece of land in every village. Huo Daishan's home is on the Liushaying River, the largest tributary of Huaihe River. When he was a child, he often bathed in this river. However, since the late 1980s, the water of Shaying River began to become dark and smelly, and then, dead fish and dead shrimp began to float along the river piece by piece. At that time, the water conservancy network extending in all directions became Shen Qiu's nightmare. There are cancer patients in two alleys of a village in Shenqiu. Since the late 1980s, Huodaishan has continuously reported the pollution situation of Shaying River to relevant departments.

1994, the State Council promulgated the Regulations on the Prevention and Control of Water Pollution in Huaihe River Basin, and put forward the control target of 1997, when the sewage reaches the standard and the water quality is clear in 2000.

At the end of 1997, Huo Daishan, who worked as a photojournalist in Zhoukou Daily, saw a report in the newspaper that the pollution control in Huaihe River Basin was up to standard. However, during the field investigation in Huodai Mountain, it was found that the pollution has not been alleviated, the Shaying River is still seriously polluted, and the river is still full of black water, dead fish and odor. Many insiders lied about meeting the standards, but most of them talked privately. Huo Daishan also believes that there are some problems in some reflection channels. At that time, Ni, the grassroots leader in shenqiu county, was Huo Daishan's childhood partner. Ni was furious at the township head meeting, refused to implement the unified caliber stipulated by the county, denounced fraud, and ran away from water pollution in many ways. One day, the petitioner came to him with polluted Huaihe River water. Ni said that he was reporting to his superiors, but the people had to let him taste the polluted water himself. Ni Anmin drank the black polluted water in public. Later, Ni developed esophageal cancer. When Huo Daishan visited Ni, he asked Huo Daishan to speak for the people wholeheartedly. Huo Daishan agreed, and then Ni died.

The Huaihe River originates from Tongbai Mountain in the west of Henan Province and flows through Henan, Shandong, Anhui, Jiangsu and other provinces, with a total length of 1 1,000 kilometers and more than 580 tributaries, with a drainage area of 270,000 square kilometers and a population of about10.8 billion. It is the third largest river in China. The water pollution in Huaihe River keeps pace with the industrial development, and gradually intensifies. In the past, the Huaihe River basin was dominated by agriculture, and the river was crystal clear and ready to drink. By the end of 1980s and the beginning of 1990s, the water pollution in Huaihe River had reached an alarming level. Ecological disasters have become the most important disasters in Huaihe River Basin. The tributaries such as Shaying River and Wohe River in the upper reaches of Huaihe River have successively opened floodgates to release water, and the black water is surging, rolling and turbid, and stinking, forming a black pollution mass of 1.55 km in the main stream of Huaihe River, resulting in a seven-fold increase in the main pollutant index of river water on the usual basis. Wherever the sewage mass goes, all living things will die if they come into contact with poison. In fact, as early as 1995, the state decided to control the Huaihe River. By 1997, the sewage discharge of coastal enterprises reached the standard, and the water quality became clear in 2000. Huo Daishan believes that if the wind of counterfeiting is allowed to spread, the water quality of the entire Huaihe River Basin will get worse and worse. As a reporter, he knows that revealing the truth requires hard evidence. 1998, Huo Daishan resigned from the newspaper. After resigning, he began to take photos of the whole Huaihe River basin. He traveled by car, on foot and by bike to more than 20 counties and cities along the Huaihe River, traveled more than 4,000 kilometers from the source to the end of the Huaihe River, and traveled to more than 200 villages in the Huaihe River Basin. He shot 15000 works of water pollution in Huaihe River Basin at his own expense. During the inspection, Huo Daishan became a good friend of many local villagers. Through these friends, Huo Daishan also got a lot of information about Huaihe River pollution. For example, when local people reflect the water pollution problem, almost all of them mention the difficulty of drinking water every day. At that time, many young people were healthy when they went to school and worked outside, but they began to have diarrhea every time they went home. Huo Daishan's investigation shows that it is a big lie for many people to join hands to meet the pollution standards: some factories directly extract groundwater and pretend to be treated sewage for inspection; Some places bought live fish from the market, put them in the river, and then fished them out with nets, which proved that the water ecology had been restored ... Huo Daishan recorded these and reported them to the local environmental protection department, but some departments paid little attention.

1999 In the winter, it stinks in a middle school less than 100 meters away from Shaying River. Huo Daishan photographed the children wearing masks to resist the smell in class, which was later reprinted by many media. The shocking photos entered people's field of vision through the media, and the lie that the Huaihe River reached the standard of pollution control was exposed in front of the facts. Subsequently, CCTV made a special program report, further revealing to the public the fact that the Huaihe River is seriously polluted, which aroused the concern of all sectors of society. On June 5, 2000, CCTV specially invited Joe, a little girl wearing a mask in the photo, to tell the disaster caused by water pollution in front of hundreds of millions of viewers all over the country.

On June 7, 2000, a vice governor of Henan Province saw a photo of flowers refusing pollution on TV, and went to Shenqiu to make an unannounced visit to the school and the village near the school in the photo. After the unannounced visit, he said on the spot: First, increase investment in water pollution control and environmental protection in the Huaihe River; The second is to allocate funds from the province to drill a deep well for the village as soon as possible so that the villagers can drink tap water.

Later, during the inspection, Huo Daishan visited a village called Maggie Huang. According to local people, after water pollution, groundwater has been seriously polluted due to sewage infiltration, but this well water with stench and a lot of carcinogens is still drunk by residents. A few years later, the village became "cancer villages". In 2000, a group of photos of Huodaishan "a village with tumor caused by pollution" won the grand prize of "Environmental Warning Education Photo Exhibition" sponsored by the Propaganda Department of the CPC and the State Environmental Protection Administration, which aroused the concern of the outside world about the pollution of Shaying River. Similar to Maggie Huang Village, there are many administrative villages such as Dongsunlou Village and Sun Ying Village in the northern suburbs 10.

200 1 Huodaishan establishes a non-governmental environmental protection organization-Guardian of Huaihe River. Volunteers include farmers, retired cadres, teachers, experts and scholars, lawyers and college students.

Since 2003, Huo Daishan has selected 120 ecological pictures of Huaihe River and made them into 105 exhibition boards. They have been exhibited in universities and cities along the Huaihe River in Beijing, Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu, Hubei and other places with the theme of "The Call of Huaihe Home". After seeing these pictures, people in the Huaihe River Basin knew that it was time to thoroughly control pollution. At the same time, a speech on "Huaihe River-the Life of 200 Million People" was held, with an audience of more than 654.38+00000.

From June, 5438 to October, 2003/KLOC-0, Huodaishan established the "Huaihe Ecological Environment Science Research Center", which set off the Huaihe River environmental protection fever. The "Huaihe Guardian" environmental protection organization has volunteers everywhere. Later, the Huaihe River water pollution public monitoring network was established, and local people set up groups in every place. They went to the river every day to check the pollution discharge of the factory. Volunteers are mainly college students, retired cadres and retired teachers from all walks of life.

With repeated appeals from Huo Daishan and environmental protection volunteers, shenqiu county took the lead in closing 15 small enterprises in China and became one of the most prominent areas in environmental protection work in recent years.

In July 2004, Zhoukou Municipal Government invested 900,000 yuan to drill a deep well with a depth of more than 400 meters for Maggie Huang Village. The American Charity Foundation donated 350 drinking water filters to the East Village Building, another cancer-prone village.

Under the appeal of Huo Daishan and volunteers, the state has drilled 46 deep wells for shenqiu county, and 1.3 million people have drunk clean water. They also won some relief funds and projects for "cancer villages". Every household installed a water purifier and distributed anticancer drugs, helping more than 200 cancer patients. According to him, the state has decided to allocate 40 million yuan each year to dig deep wells in polluted areas, and the first batch of funds for drilling wells have been put in place, and tens of thousands of farmers have drunk clean water.

In 2007, Huo Daishan won the individual award of "2007 Green China Person of the Year", and Huo Daishan was the only winner among grassroots non-governmental environmental protection organizations.

At the award ceremony, CCTV host Bai read out the award speech: "10 years, Huo Daishan has promoted the governance of the Huaihe River with the strength of an ordinary citizen, which has attracted worldwide attention, and his forward-looking demands for the environment and health have also been verified by reality. His participation proves that civil power can be an important supplement to government supervision. "

"I am not a radical environmentalist, but an actor. I focus on environmental changes and strive to make everything impossible. " "Conduct legal environmental protection activities within the framework permitted by law. I think I am gentle, but some people still think I am a fighter. "