China will close down all small paper mills in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River before the year 2009 when the world's biggest hydropower project -- the Three Gorges Project-- is finished.

Meanwhile China plans to build over a dozen waste water treatment plants in the cities of Chongqing, Fuling and Wanxian in Sichuan province, which are in the reservoir area, said Guo Shuyan, Deputy Director of the Three Gorges Project Construction Commission under the State Council.

The moves are part of an ambitious program China has launched to protect the ecology and environment in the Three Gorges area, and minimize possible adverse effects that might result from the building of the huge hydropower dam.

Under the massive scheme, he said, China will tighten control of pollution, establish a supervisory system on the eco-environment, build an extensive forest belt in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze and develop ecological agriculture.

And protection of bio-diversity, strengthened environmental protection on the dam site, and construction of ecology in the resettled zones, are also high on the agenda.

China plans to dam the Yangtze River next year and complete the hydropower project in 2009. The project, construction of which began at the end of 1994, will mean the submerging of 17,000 hectares of farmland. Meanwhile the resettlement of over one million people will also cause temporary harm to the area's extensive plantation acres.

Guo Shuyan said that the environmental protection program, being implemented side by side with construction of the Three Gorges Project, is proceeding smoothly.

He said the closure of the small paper mills, estimated at over 30, is aimed at stemming black industrial waste from being continually poured into the Yangtze River. In their place China will build one or two modernized paper plants with state-of-the-art waste treatment facilities, he said.

Chongqing City, industrial metropolis of southwest China, is one of the major sources of pollution of the Yangtze River, which discharges about one billion tons of untreated waste water into the river each year.

Currently the city is building a waste water treatment plant with a designed daily processing capacity of 48,000 tons, in cooperation with Denmark. This will be the first plant of its kind in Chongqing city, and four more are already in the pipeline.

China is pushing ahead a technical renovation campaign to enhance processing techniques and recycling standards in factories discharging waste water.

"Our target is that no industrial waste water be discharged before being cleaned and most of domestic sewage will be gathered for concentrated treatment, by the time the Three Gorges Project is completed."

The official said that China is also adopting tough measures to effectively stop voyaging vessels from littering and polluting the Yangtze River by 1997, while stockpiles of rubbish along the banks of the river will be cleared away before the end of the century.

To reduce soil erosion, China will grow 2.86 million ha of forests on the middle and upper reaches of the mighty Yangtze within five years. The central government alone will earmark 450 million yuan towards the plan.

China plans to conduct plant protection schemes that involve rare species, plant community, ecological systems and landscapes in two State-level forest parks in Yichang City of Hubei province, where the dam of the Three Gorges Reservoir is sited. And a landscape ecological protection zone is expected to be located in the "Lesser Three Gorges", a world-famous scenic spot.

Close attention will also be paid to protecting aquatic animals in the region, Guo Shuyan said, adding that three protection zones and a dozen breeding stations have been planned.

The zones will cater for peculiar fish species on the upper reaches of Yangtze River, for rare aquatic animals on the middle, and for white Chinese sturgeon infants in the river mouth.

China is enforcing tight rules aimed at preventing construction work from causing environmental pollution, while advanced facilities are being installed to treat construction waste. By the year 2000, over 90 percent of waste water from construction is expected to be treated.

China has set up a powerful watchdog panel, the Three Gorges Project Ecological and Environmental Protection Coordination Group, composed of 16 government departments and localities, to supervise and push forward the environmental protection program.

Describing the Three Gorges Project, Guo called it an "environmentally-sound, ecological project on the whole," which will help stave off floods that have threatened lives of tens of millions of people in the middle and lower reaches of the river, with hydropower energy being a non-pollutant power source beneficial for the people.

The quality of water in the Three Gorges Reservoir is expected to be affected "to some extent", due to discharge of waste water in the upper reaches on the Yangtze River.

"However the reservoir will never become a 慴asin of dead water or a pool of stagnant water,?quot; said Wu, who once worked for eight years as Director of Yangtze River Water Resources Protection Bureau.

He said the Yangtze River's annual water volume at the dam site stands at 451 billion tons and the reservoir is designed to hold 39.3 billion tons, while waste water discharged to the river runs to 1.2 billion tons.

This means that the ratio of water and waste water in the Yangtze River there is 400 to one, far below the international standard of a polluted river of 20 to one.

"Running water is never stale," goes a Chinese saying. "The flowing Yangtze River will never be still either, -- even when the Three Gorges Dam is completed." Wu said.