More than 750 industrial firms have been closed down or ordered
to improve their environmental standards following a two-month
campaign by the top environmental watchdog to clean up the
country's rivers.
The State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA)
launched the campaign in July in six cities, two counties and five
industrial parks along the Yangtze, Yellow, Huaihe and Haihe
rivers.
Of the 1,162 firms investigated, 400 were closed down, 249 had
their operations suspended while improvements were made to their
environmental facilities, and 102 were given a deadline to correct
wrongdoings.
The SEPA also recovered 725 million yuan (US$96 million) in
fines for polluting.
Pan Yue, deputy minister of the SEPA said: "Punishment is not
our aim. We want to push local industries to restructure their
operations."
In Xiangfen county of Shanxi Province, the country's largest
coal-mining province, the campaign led to the closure of facilities
responsible for the annual production of 800,000 tons of coke, 1.8
million tons of pig iron, 8 million tons of coal washing and
100,000 tons of chemicals due to them using outdated technologies,
which resulted in heavy levels of pollution.
"The campaign was only run on a small scale," Pan said. "We
still have a long way to go to curb the nationwide industrial
expansion, which demands high volumes of energy and creates huge
amounts of pollution."
Dealing with water pollution has become the SEPA's primary
concern. Its figures showed that of the 1,406 accidents reported in
2005, water pollution accounted for nearly half.
In November 2005, the Songhua River, a tributary of the
Heilongjiang River, which forms part of the border between China
and Russia, was hit by a chemical spill. The incident caught the
attention of people at home and abroad, especially in Russia, and
since then the two countries have been cooperating to monitor the
river's water quality.
The government has put the treatment of the river on the top of
its working agenda and has allocated a budget of more than 13
billion yuan to fund more than 200 cleanup projects.
According to the SEPA, 84 projects have already been completed
or are under construction. Three wastewater treatment plants have
been opened and 15 pollution sources have adopted clean production
technologies.
(China Daily September 4, 2007)
