Swimmers brave "smelly" river in south China

BEIJING, July 13 (Reuters) Over 3,500 swimmers plunged into the Pearl River in China's far south in an official effort to show that the once toxic waterway is now clean enough to dip in, state media reported.

But at least one swimmer still came up rubbing sore eyes.

The swimmers jumped into the river that slices through Guangzhou, capital of the industrial powerhouse province of Guangdong.

Provincial governor Huang Huahua said anti-pollution efforts meant the river water was ''no longer thick and smelly,'' the Xinhua news agency said.

But one swimmer surnamed Fan suggested the government's clean-up still had some way to go. ''Under the water, I could not see things 0.5 meters in front of me. And my eyes were uncomfortable,'' Fan told Xinhua after the swim yesterday.

The last mass swim of the Pearl River took place in the 1970s, and since then heavy industrial runoff has blighted the river.

''The water became so smelly that nobody dared swim there and people even covered their noses when walking by,'' said Liu Youhong, a 65-year old environmental campaigner.

The 2,200-km-long river is China's third longest, and is up to 700 metres wide as it runs through Guangzhou. Officials have promised to clean up the country's many polluted waterways.

Reuters MQA