Air quality up, living conditions improve in Gansu’s provincial capital
As the year 2018 is coming to an end, the Lanzhou environmental protection bureau recently reviewed its year-long efforts to improve the city’s air quality and deployed new plans for next year’s air pollution prevention and control.
Located between two mountains and home to a considerable amount of heavy industry, Lanzhou, capital of Northwest China’s Gansu province, had suffered heavily from pollution over the past few decades and was listed as one of the cities with the heaviest air pollution nationwide.
After years of effort, however, it has improved its air quality to such an extent that it received a prize at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Paris, France.
The environmental watchdog said that this year the city recorded 204 days with excellent or fine air quality as of the end of November, with the average density of PM10 and PM2.5 — hazardous particles smaller than 10 and 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter — falling by 13.1 percent and 8.7 percent respectively over the previous year. This marks the city’s lowest density on record since 2013. In addition, there was no severe air pollution caused by human factors, according to the watchdog.
Rui Wengang, director of the environmental protection bureau, said: “We have highlighted the comprehensive application of scientific and technological means to prevent and control the air pollution this winter.”
Many nonstop, omni-directional monitor systems covering the emission of various sources of pollution are now in use in Lanzhou to help measure the pollution accurately and provide the basis for scientific management and regional examination, Rui added.
Lanzhou has also resorted to remote monitoring technologies to better implement the prohibition of straw burning, one of the major emission sources of air pollution in towns and villages. It set up a related integrated monitoring platform, through which the supervision departments at the municipal, district, county and village levels can discover on their computers or cell phones those areas where straw burning is taking place almost as soon as it happens, significantly enhancing workplace efficiency.
In the city, registered construction sites are now all equipped with online video monitors and PM10 testing facilities, and fixed infrared remote sensing devices and movable testing vans are also used to examine the exhausts of vehicles throughout the city.
Some experts worry that environmental protection might curb economic development. But in Lanzhou, these two things are not a zero-sum game, as the city allows and encourages 24-hour construction on sites that have properly implemented the six dust suppression measures required by the city’s environmental protection bureau to ensure economic growth.
The city has also invested heavily in the treatment of industrial pollution. Many power plants in Lanzhou have finished reconstruction to meet the ultra-low emissions standards. The industrial emission in urban areas has reached the city’s lowest ever level, according to the bureau.
The bureau has also made efforts in curbing airborne pollutants from coal-fired boilers and urban residents’ bulk coal consumption. The bulk coal consumption is expected to fall to less than 150,000 tons this winter, a drop of 50 percent over the same period in 2016.
Rui said that the bureau has paid great attention to the opinions from central environmental protection inspectors regarding rectification, and has made improvements in nearly 81 percent of related issues to date.
The bureau has also carried out self-inspection of the ecological environment in the city’s nature reserves. As of Nov 12, 91 problems out of 123 problems in 13 categories put forward by the Gansu provincial forestry administration had been rectified.
In the coming years, the bureau will continue to make every effort to protect the environment in Lanzhou and to transform the city into a modernized regional center, Rui said.
It will also work to maintain the environmental security and protect the rights of people, while continuing to strive for good air quality and an improved environment to benefit the public, he added.