25 arrests over 100,000 tons of illegally dumped Zhejiang garbage

A total of 25 people have been arrested over two separate cases of large- scale fly- tipping, in which more than 100,000 tons of garbage were dumped last year, the People’s Procuratorate of East China’s Zhejiang Province said Tuesday.

The 25 detainees are suspected of involvement in illegal dumping that occurred between May and December last year, the Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday.

In one case, over 90,000 tons of household trash from Haiyan county, Zhejiang, was reported to have been dumped at sites in Zhejiang and Anhui provinces from May 2016, or thrown into the Nantong section of the Yangtze River in East China’s Jiangsu Province.

A huge amount of household trash including shoes, plastic bags, condoms and dia- pers was seen on December 21, 2016 near the Nantong section of the Yangtze, news portal china. com reported December 22, 2016.

In the other case, 10,990 tons of trash from Haining, Zhejiang, was reportedly collected and mostly dumped into the Yangtze between November and December 2016, causing economic losses of 300,000 yuan ($ 43,725).

Suspects surnamed Cai, Yu and Zhang colluded to get a waste management contract from Haiyan county and then paid a trash shipping company 200 yuan per ton to dump the waste, which they did illegally.

It is unknown if any of the suspects have been charged, and the probe is ongoing.

The State Council issued an action plan in April 2016 to improve water quality.

By 2020, 70 percent of the water in China’s seven major rivers should be of good quality, and the volume of poor quality groundwater across the country should be limited to 15 percent of the total.