MEP says it imposed greater fines, punished more violators in 2016
on Wednesday that they found several large pits filled with polluted water during a recent inspection tour of North China. It said the largest, located in Dacheng’s Zhaofu township, covers an area of 170,000 square meters, equal to the size of 23 soccer pitches, while the pit in Tianjin covers an area of 150,000 square meters.
The Tianjin government announced they have sent workers to the scene to begin cleaning up the pit.
The Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) on Wednesday urged the local authorities in Hebei and Tianjin to clean up the sewage pits and ordered an intensification of water and soil monitoring in and around the polluted pools.
The Tianjin government’s investigation into the sewage pit showed that it was caused by sewage discharge from a nearby factory and the problem had persisted despite treatment efforts in 2014.
Xiang Chun, head of the NGO, told the Global Times that the Tianjin pool is surrounded by farmland. The water in the pit is rust-colored and in some areas, its pH level has already reached 1.
The pH scale measures the acidity or alkalinity of a liquid, and ranges from 0 to 14, with 7 being neutral and anything below 7 acidic.
Thepit was first formed in the late 1970s when a brick factory took soil from the spot, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Friday.
Moreover, Xiang said that their inspectors also found industrial residue piled up in the open in Tianjin, with local residents claiming the residue has been there since 2015 and particularly stinks in summer.
“They (the residents) could not even open their windows,” said Xiang.
Authorities in Jinghai district told Xinhua that early in 2013, the district formulated a plan to curb water pollution and invested 600 million yuan ($87 million) to treat sewage pits. Since 2013, the local government has punished 115 people and sentenced 23 violators for pollution-related misdeeds.
Tian Weiyong, a senior MEP official, told reporters at a press conference on Friday that the ministry will seriously deal with the issue and never tolerates any pollution violations.
“The sewage pits in Tianjin and Hebei revealed two types of crimes, one is that some people were trying to avoid responsibility for pollution by using the sewage pits, and the other is that some people have discharged dangerous pollutants illegally,” said Tian.
“The central government has responded quickly, which should be encouraged and praised. However, we still do not know how the Tianjin pit came to be polluted. The government should inform the public in a timely manner,” said Xiang.
He added that the NGO also found other sewage pits in North China which should be taken into careful consideration as well.
Fooling regulators
The Dacheng county authorities said on Wednesday night that the polluted pools were formed by years of digging and the illegal dumping of acidic waste in 2013 which contaminated water and soil in the area.
The local authorities have started to treat the pollution but have not yet finished the job, according to the MEP statement. Two treatment firms were previously contracted to bring water quality back to normal, but both failed, according to the Dacheng government.
China’s Environmental Protection Law, which took effect in 2015, banned the use of seepage wells and pits, and other ways of fooling or misleading regulators.
According to a statement released by the MEP on Friday, the latest round of official pollution inspections in 28 cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and nearby areas found that 2,808 of the 4,077 firms inspected have violated environmental rules.
The statement said that it imposed record fines of 6.63 billion yuan for environmental violations in 2016, 56 percent higher than in 2015.
Moreover, the ministry punished a record 124,700 environmental violations, an increase of 28 percent.