Frustrated, Mr. Zhang did what very few Chinese have done. He sued a business upstream for compensation, adding to a small but growing number of environmental suits by pollution victims that may become test cases. No one doubts that pollution in the sudsy green river killed the ducks. But in this relatively poor and extremely polluted country, there is often no simple remedy for the millions of people such as Mr. Zhang whose livelihoods have been destroyed by pollution. Though China has enacted strict antipollution laws in the last decade, enforcement is still lax in many places.
Flagrant violations occur without so any serious investigation.
He said he believed that he knew the culprit, chemicals from an upstream pig farm. But I'm just a farmer. There are lots of things that dump waste water into this river, mostly in the middle of the night. The legal-aid center, the first in China to focus on pollution, is affiliated with the Law and Politics University in Beijing. China's rivers are some of the dirtiest in the world.