The Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the world's highest railway, has had no adverse effects on the surrounding environment and wildlife after it went into operation last July, according to an assessment by the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA).

The landscape, lakes and the frozen earth are well preserved and the wildlife's migration also remains unchanged, concluded the panel of officials and experts from SEPA and the Ministry of Railways based on their continuous monitoring and observation of the Golmud to Lhasa section.

"We have set up a long-term monitoring system and emergency relief mechanism on the water, air, noise and ecology in the hope of assessing the environment at all times," said Zhang Tianhua, vice head of the environmental protection bureau in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region on Tuesday.

"Every train running on the Qinghai-Tibet Railway has special tanks for storing garbage and waste water. The waste is collected from the trains and treated in designated stations," said Zhang.

"A total of 60,000 tons of waste collected from the Qinghai-Tibet Railway stations has been treated so far and no pollution incidents have been reported," he said.

The frozen earth on the plateau has also been well preserved thanks to the technology of heat preservation, slope protection and roadbed ventilation in the frozen earth areas, said Tong Changjiang, researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"It's the well-preserved frozen tundra that ensures the train's speed at 100 kilometers per hour," Tong said.

The Qinghai-Tibet Railway stretches 1,956 kilometers from Qinghai's provincial capital Xining to Lhasa. Construction of the section from Golmud to Lhasa started on June 29, 2001 and was completed on July 1, 2006, at a cost of more than 33 billion yuan.

The 1.5-billion-yuan investment in the railway's environmental protection project, about 4.6 percent of the total, hit a record high in China's history of railroad construction.

(Xinhua News Agency June 6, 2007)