Qingdao has voiced confidence that the Olympic sailing competitions in the co-host city next month would be a success.

"We have confidence to ensure the success of the events," Xia Geng, the mayor of Qingdao said in a pep rally one month ahead of the Games.

Preparations in Qingdao had been running smoothly with all the venues already built and highly praised by the visiting officials from International Organizing Committee(IOC).

However, the sudden invasion of algae in June had been to some extent affecting the normal order of the host city.

"It was an unavoidable natural disaster," said Hein Verbruggen, Chairman of the Coordination Commission of IOC, "but I believe Qingdao can keep their promise and make the events go on wheels."

CAUSE NO POLLUTION

The algae, namely enteromorpha prolifera, was first detected on May 31, 60 sea miles east off the Dagong Island by the North China Sea Branch of the State Oceanic Administration and some fishermen working on the sea.

Experts found the algae was exotic which flew from the central region of the Yellow Sea and would cause no influences on the water quality of the sea off Qingdao coast.

"The algae will be converted into carbon, generating no toxin during the process," said Tang Qisheng, ocean-ecological expert with the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Zhou Mingjiang, a research fellow with the Institute of Oceanology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), noted that different from the blue-green algae that grew in polluted water, the algae in Qingdao only grew in clean water and would not affect people's drinking water.

CLEAN-UP IN FULL SWING

In the past two weeks, more than 130,000 soldiers and volunteers worked furiously at the site, removing more than 50 tons of algae from the water.

As of Monday afternoon, the coverage of algae in the 49.48-square-kilometer Olympic sailing venue was reduced to 0.679 square kilometers, according to the North China Sea Branch of the State Oceanic Administration.

"As the algae bloom has subsided, most cleaners are still 'searching' for algae," said Wang Yiqiu, an official with the Qingdao oceanic and fishery bureau.

On Tuesday, the density of the green weed shrank to 1.37 percent from 32 percent over the past 10 days.

The workers are set to complete a 32,000-meter enclosure in the sea to keep algae out of the venue. About half of the enclosure was completed as of midday on Monday.

Zhao Shumei, 81, is probably the oldest algae-cleaning volunteer in Qingdao.

For a week, she has taken a bus to the site early in the morning and has put together pieces of algae washed onto the beach with a harrow so that other cleaners may easily collect them.

The hunchbacked old woman could certainly not work as fast as the young, and she was almost always drenched to the skin. "I'm just doing as much as I can. Together, we'll clean it all up," she said.

Now, the troops, fishermen and volunteers are busy building an outside "flowing enclosure " on the base of earlier one and up to Wednesday afternoon, half part of the project had been finished.

"We have effectively kept the expansion of algae within limits and now all the preparaion work is going on smoothly." said the mayor Xia Geng.

The Qingdao government has vowed to clear up the sailing venue before July 15.

TRAINING BACK TO NORMAL

On Monday, 308 athletes and coaches from 29 countries and regions were preparing for the Games in Qingdao.

Zhao Jian, a press officer with the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Committee, said the committee had not received any complaints over water quality.

By Thursday, the clinic at the training base for the Olympic sailing event had not received any reports of skin or stomach irritations.

Qingdao is a coastal Olympic co-host city in east China's Shandong Province. The Olympic sailing events are scheduled here for August 9-23.

(Xinhua News Agency July 11, 2008)