Elon student wins Pulitzer Center fellowship to report on China water pollution
Ethan Wu won a Pulitzer Center fellowship to report on China’s polluted waterways, a trip shaped by his childhood near Beijing and Alamance County’s own water worries.
Ethan Wu ’27 won a 2026 Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellowship on April 20, setting up a reporting trip back to the Beijing area where he spent much of his childhood and where he plans to examine pollution efforts along the LiangShui, or Cold Water, River.
Wu, a Virginia resident majoring in communication design at Elon University, grew up in DaXing near Beijing until he was 12. He is fluent in Mandarin and runs his own photography business, a mix of skills that helped his proposal stand out with judges for its background research and on-the-ground context.
His project will focus on water pollution in underserved areas near Beijing, where he wants to trace how factory effluent, agricultural runoff and untreated waste affect rivers, lakes and groundwater. Wu said air pollution in China has received far more attention than water quality, even though polluted waterways can shape daily life just as directly. He also recalled the waterways from his childhood as places marked by algae blooms and litter, and said he wants to see whether conditions have changed.
The fellowship matters close to home in Alamance County, too. Alamance County Environmental Health says it permits and inspects drinking water wells and irrigation wells, samples many private wells each year and helps well owners address water-quality problems. A county-level water-quality summary reported 99 public water systems serving 134,389 people, with 11,703 total drinking-water violations and 883 health-based violations. The same summary said PFAS was detected in four of five tested systems, and that 89.9% of county systems had violations. Those systems include Burlington, Mebane, Graham, Elon, Haw River, Swepsonville, Green Level, Ossipee, Village of Alamance and Saxapahaw.
Environmental pressure is not limited to drinking water. The Haw River Assembly said it documented sedimentation violations across Alamance County over a six-month period and delivered its findings to county commissioners on July 10. The group said it received more than 30 complaints from residents and reviewed seven of 22 sites with repeat violations. It also argued the county needs a locally delegated sedimentation program because most projects outside Burlington fall under the Winston-Salem regional office’s jurisdiction.
Elon University is a long-standing member of the Pulitzer Center’s Campus Consortium, which gives student and recent-graduate journalists access to mentorship, networking, journalism resources and publication opportunities. The center says fellows’ work can be featured on its website and in major outlets, putting Wu’s reporting on a path from a childhood memory in DaXing to a global conversation with direct relevance in Alamance County.
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