A total of 11,767 cases related to environmental protection have been investigated by local environmental departments across China in the first nine months of this year, with penalties totaling 553.97 million RMB ($82 million).

On Nov. 2, China's Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) released news of local progress in implementing supplementary measures to the Environmental Protection Law, as well as collaboration with the judicial departments in the first three quarters of 2016.

According to Tian Weiyong, director of the Department of Environmental Monitoring under the MEP, local environmental protection departments applied the supplementary measures to 11,767 cases. Those cases fell into five categories: daily penalty (529 cases, with the penalties totaling 553.97 million RMB); seal-up and seizure (5,133 cases); restriction or suspension of operation (2,434 cases); administrative detention (2,313 cases); and transferrence to police (1,358 cases).

Tian said that, compared with the same period last year, the number of cases in each of the five categories increased to a certain extent, and that enforcement was more intense. Specifically, the number of daily penalty cases went up 16.5 percent, seal-up and seizure cases 88.6 percent, restriction or suspension of operations 31.9 percent, administrative detentions 78.9 percent, and suspected pollution crimes 20 percent.