BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- In a way, the Olympics have helped
Beijing resident Guo Suying, 72, get rid of the irritating gasoline smell from a nearby filling station.
"This summer, we can open the window any time without fearing that the house would be filled with the smell," said Guo, who lives in Haidian District.
The change reflects a large-scale project involving the reclamation of emissions at gas stations across the capital, part of the Olympic host's efforts to improve air quality.
The city's 1,265 gas stations, 38 oil storehouses and 1,026 oil tank trucks completed an emission reclamation project during the past 13 months, said Li Kunsheng, a
Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau official.
That's only a tiny part of the capital's progress in keeping the commitments it made seven years ago, when it won the bid for the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Beijing Shougang Group, one of China's leading steel makers and the city's major polluter, has extinguished the fire in three of its four blast furnaces at its
Beijing plants.
The plants have slashed monthly production to 200,000 tonnes in the third quarter, said group president Zhu Jimin. "This is about 29 percent of our normal output."
Air quality is a major concern for participants in the Aug. 8-24 Games. The municipal authorities have also made it a priority to reduce pollution over the past decade, investing about 120 billion yuan (17 billion U.S. dollars) in the effort.
Measures such as the closure and removal of small polluting factories, the transformation of residential heating from coal to electricity, and stricter vehicle exhaust standards, have already done much to improve the capital's air quality.
For example, the number of "blue sky" days in the city -- an indicator of air quality -- increased to 246 last year from 100 in1998.
To realize the "green" Olympics, the capital's afforested land increased by 10,000 hectares and meadowland by 4,653 ha from 2001 to 2007, according to Wang Sumei, a municipal official in charge of landscape engineering.
Du Shaozhong, the
Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau's deputy director, said to ensure good air quality during the Games, neighboring regions such as
Tianjin and Hebei will control dust, vehicle exhaust and industrial pollution prior to and during the sports event.
CLEARING THE ROADS
Beijing has promised that traffic conditions will meet the demands of the Games, with the construction of roads and subways and upgrading of transport facilities.
The terminal building for Olympic charter flights was opened on July 8 at the
Beijing Capital International Airport.
The terminal, with 12 gates, is part of Terminal 3, a major expansion for the airport as it prepared for a passenger surge during the Olympics.
With Terminal 3's opening on Feb. 29, the airport can handle up to 76 million passengers annually, more than double the previous capacity. The airport is expected to receive about 5.56 million people during the Games in August.
Meanwhile, subway lines 5, 10, the Olympic line and a 28-km light rail linking the downtown with the airport are all to be in operation before the Games. It will only take 16 minutes to travel from downtown to the airport by light rail, compared with the current one-hour trip by road.
