£70m To Be Spent On Cleansing The Rhine

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30151, 7 June 1963, Page 14

£70m To Be Spent On Cleansing The Rhine

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

LONDON, June «.

The North Rhine Westphalia State Government is to control expenditure of £7om during the next five yean on cleansing the Rhine, which to becoming more and more polluted, says the Bonn correspondent of “The Times,” It to estimated that some 17,000.000 tons of waste water from industry find their way daily into West Germany’s rivers and the Rhine is the chief of them. States whose territory lies along the river’s banks have, under the leadership of North Rhine-West-phalia. assumed responsibility for the task.

Besides funds from local authorities, industry will contribute voluntarily a large Mxm towards the cleansing programme. Only threequarters of the industrial waste water to cleansed either mechanically or biologically before entering Germany’s rivers.

■ The worst impurities coming into the Rhine are salts at all kinds—an esttensded 40.000 tons are taken daily by river to the sea—oils and detergents. , Moreover, almost half the drinking water for North Rhine-Westphalia, including Bonn and Dusseldorf, to ob-

Mined from the Rhine. The cleansing scheme provides for an observation ship or floating laboratory to be put tn service next spring to carry out a constant check on pollution. «

Testa have already shown that the visibility depth of Rhln * now only twothirds what it was In IMS, while the absolute oxygen content to down to half. Thus even the river's natural cl*an«iog proerweg are considerably hindered.