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China Turns on 'Red Lights' to Heavy Pollution Projects
In 2000, the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) turned down some heavy pollution projects after examining the report on the projects affecting the environment by 200 large projects with each having an investment of over RMB 100 million yuan.
The SEPA announced February 8 the results of the report on environmental influence of some planned projects and the check on some environmental protection facilities completed last year, while a quarterly results will be published as from this year.
Zhu Xingxiang with the SEPA said that China has kept a firm hand on the heavily polluting projects of some such industries as electric, steel, petroleum, chemical industry, cement, and papermaking. "Any project that is unable to meet the state's industrial policies, or that has problems in outlining or environmental protection, shall fail to get their environmental report approved", the official is quoted as saying.
Last year, the SEPA denied the approval of the following projects like Beijing Yanshan Cement Plant Expansion Project and the Nitrogen Amino Acid Project with an annual production capacity of twenty thousand tons in Turpan, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, that have the above-mentioned problems.
According to Zhu, a total of some 475 thousand tons of chemical oxygen consumption, 5.38 million tons of industrial dust, and about 20 thousand tons of sulfur dioxide were cut down in the projects built in 2000.
In addition, the SEPA approved the 73 environmental protection facilities and is considering on another 85 projects involving a total investment of over RMB 170bn yuan, of which environmental protection investment taking up RMB 9.7bn yuan, that will help increase the wastewater treatment capability to over 2 billion tons. Altogether nine projects were not approved or put off due to environmental protection problems.
By PD Online staff member Huang Ying
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