Local authorities in Haiyan county, East China's Zhejiang Province have pledged not to start construction of a garbage incineration plant after the construction plan was met with widespread public protests by local residents.
The Haiyan Household Waste Incineration Plant project will be halted, the Haiyan government said on its official Sina Weibo account on Thursday.
The project, which would have occupied 4.67 hectares in an economic development zone, was introduced on April 13, but public rallies against it began breaking out on Tuesday, news portal thepaper.cn reported.
"It is confusing to see some netizens who harbor evil intent publish untrue and exaggerated comments and post pictures of other regions to mislead the public and spread rumors," the Haiyan government said in a Weibo post, after protests continuing into Wednesday affected local traffic.
The government also explained that the authorities will strictly follow normative procedures and promised that public opinions will be heard.
A local resident who participated in the protests claimed that several hundred people participated in the rallies, which began to die down on Thursday. "We know a trash incinerator is useful and effective, but the local government is slack in supervision in pollution control," the resident, who requested anonymity, told the Global Times.
The Haiyan government argued on Weibo that the incineration plant's influence on the surrounding environment will be effectively limited, claiming that it is hyperbolic to say that the plant will cause severe air pollution.
It explained that non-industrial garbage landfills in the county have become overloaded, receiving more than 450 tons of waste per day in 2015, while the incineration plant would be able to handle 600 tons of waste per day.
"Similar issues are difficult to solve in China when authorities lack credibility and enterprises fall short in social responsibility," Liu Jianguo, a professor at the School of Environment at Tsinghua University, previously told the Global Times, adding that garbage incineration technology is well-developed.
Thousands of people allegedly gathered in the Yuhang district of Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province's capital, in May 2014 in protest against a planned incineration plant out of fears of pollution.
