12 charged over waste dumping in Yangtze

TWELVE people were charged yesterday for dumping more than 2,500 tons of industrial waste into the Yangtze River in east China’s Anhui Province.

The people’s procuratorate of Jinghu District, Wuhu City, brought the case against a waste treatment company in neighboring Jiangsu Province. The accused allegedly subcontracted its garbage to unqualified parties for disposal in January 2017.

Three ships transported the garbage from Jiangsu and Zhejiang Province to Tongling City in Anhui in October 2017. The accused allegedly made two failed attempts to dump another 4,410 tons of waste, according to the procuratorate.

Prosecutors said the garbage contained toxic substances and polluted the river, soil and underground water in the dumping area.

The cost of disposing of this garbage is around 7.94 million yuan (US$1.2 million) and restoring the polluted environment will cost another 3.17 million yuan.

Also yesterday, China rolled out its river chief scheme nationwide ahead of schedule amid efforts to combat water pollution, a senior official said yesterday.

The deployment was six months ahead of the plan to introduce the system nationwide by the end of 2018.

China launched the scheme in December 2016, when the top leadership decided to assign each waterway in the country a specific steward, or “river chief.”

River chiefs are responsible for resource protection, pollution prevention and control, and ecological restoration. They will be held accountable for environmental damage in bodies of water under their supervision.

As of the end of June, more than 1.06 million river chiefs had been appointed at various levels nationwide, and six mechanisms had been set up to facilitate their work, Minister of Water Resources E Jingping told reporters.