Pan Yue, vice minister of the State
Environmental Protection Administration, speaks at a press conference.
[people.com.cn file]
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GUANGZHOU: Officials at the State Environmental Protection Administration
(SEPA) said they would stand firm in combating government-backed ecological
violations that have set back the country's efforts to protect its environment
in recent years.
"The administration has set up regional environment watchdogs in Guangzhou
and Shanghai and will launch another three in Chengdu, Xi'an and Shenyang over
the next four months to ensure local governments abide by environment-protection
laws and regulations and meet relevant standards in regional economic
development," said Zhang Lijun, a deputy director of SEPA.
"This is an important step to reduce local protectionism, a major obstacle in
our law enforcement," he told an internal meeting on Wednesday in Guangzhou,
where the South China environment watchdog was set up three years ago.
The South China watchdog has mediated in several inter-provincial pollution
disputes and helped local authorities solve severe pollution incidents,
including the cadmium spill along the Beijiang River in Guangdong Province in
December 2005, said Zhang Jianming, head of the organization.
The cadmium spill threatened the local drinking and agricultural water
supplies.
Cadmium, a metallic element widely used in batteries, can cause liver and
kidney damage and lead to bone diseases. Compounds containing cadmium are also
carcinogenic.
China suffered a string of environmental disasters last year, including a
lead poisoning accident caused by a factory in Northwest China's Gansu Province
last April, which resulted in 250 children aged under 14 being sent to hospital
and left hundreds of others with excessive amounts of lead in their blood.
Last September, two factories in Yueyang of Central China's Hunan Province
flushed waste water containing a high concentration of arsenide into the
Xinqiang River, affecting the water supply for 80,000 residents in the lower
reaches.
"Governments are almost always behind the actions of corporations local
authorities sometimes tolerate environmental violations, driven by the need to
boost economic growth," said Pan Yue, another SEPA deputy director, in a recent
interview with Xinhua.
He said refusal or failure of some governments to live up to their
environmental responsibilities and their interference in environmental law
enforcement were behind some of China's persistent environmental problems.
In the run-up to the annual parliament session, which is set to open next
Monday, Pan urged the legislature to amend its 17-year-old environmental law to
make government officials more accountable for pollution.
The law should specify and emphasize the government's responsibility in
environmental protection and impose harsher punishments for infractions, he
said.
Environmental officials and media regularly lambaste local authorities for
rampant environmental violations and have called for serious punishments for
negligent officials.
To counter local protectionism, the Organization Department of the Communist
Party of China Central Committee has announced that environment-protection will
be an important index for assessing local officials' performance starting this
year.
China Daily-Xinhua
(China Daily 03/02/2007 page3)
