A handful of small, nondescript fish in Lao Wei's boat account for a whole day's fishing on the Shaying River.

Wei, 60, from Jieshou City in east China's Anhui Province, like his father and grandfather before him, used to train ospreys to catch fish. He has not been able to work in that profession for more than 10 years now because heavy pollution has wiped out the river's fish population.

Nobody trains ospreys on the Shaying, a tributary of the Huaihe River, any more. "We have no fish. Imagine, we used to have everything here: crabs, turtles and big fish," he said.

In Anhui's Fengyang County, 200 kilometers downstream from Wei's village, fisherman Yu Jiayou tells a similar story. "Fishing used to support over 3,000 households. Now there are only a few dozen still fishing."

The Huaihe, one of China's largest rivers, runs through Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces. It used to supply one-sixth of the country's water, but a decade of industrial pollution has transformed it into a toxic wasteland. The situation has grown worse this year, according to local water quality monitoring departments.

The Huaihe Water, Environment and Resources Protection Administration reported in June that little progress had been made in limiting pollution even though more than 60 billion yuan (US$7.2 billion) has been invested to correct the problem.

The administration's investigation showed that 31.5 percent of industrial operations along the river -- which include paper mills, chemical plants, food and beverage companies and textiles producers -- discharge pollutants far exceeding legal limits.

"The water is so polluted it's not even suitable for industrial or agricultural use, let alone supporting fish populations," said Wang Hui, a researcher of the Water Environmental Protection Center in Fuyang, a city on the Shaying River in Anhui.

China rates water quality from grade one to five, with five considered too toxic even to touch.

The water in the lower reaches of the Huaihe is rated five, making it unfit even for irrigation.

But fish are not the only victims of the pollution. An investigation by the Ecological Science Research Center on the Huaihe River Valley found nearly 50,000 people have cancer in at least 20 villages along the Shaying River.

At Huangmengying, a village in Shenqiu County, 114 villagers have died of cancer in the past 14 years, eight in the last two months.

More deaths will follow because cancer diagnoses are skyrocketing.

Kong Heqin, a 30-year-old mother of two, has undergone three operations for rectal cancer.

"At first I had diarrhea, then I began to vomit whenever I drank the water," Kong said. "If not for my two children, I would give up on life."

The sick, poverty-stricken mother said she enjoyed good health in her childhood and had never gone to the doctor. Then she moved to Huangmengying.

But it is not the only place on the Huaihe labeled a "cancer village."

Villagers directly attribute the situation to water pollution, blaming their poverty and chronic medical problems, which include birth defects, dementia and cancer, on the foul-smelling river.

In another village, 26-year-old Meng Qingkun was diagnosed in 2002 with spondylitis, a debilitating inflammation of the vertebrae thought to be caused by overexposure to dangerous heavy metals such as mercury.

Meng was advised to move from his village, but refused.

"I don't have enough strength to work anymore and all the money I saved has been spent on purified water. Where else could I go?" said Meng." Now I just muddle along with no thought about tomorrow."

(Xinhua News Agency October 19, 2004)