A company was sued and will give two million yuan (308,000 U.S. dollars) in compensation for dumping contaminated water, announced by Dalian People's Procuratorate in northeast China's Liaoning Province on Tuesday.
China-Japan joint venture Dalian Riqian Electrical Machine Company (DREMC) was found to have launched manufacturing project without environmental approval.
They were then sued by Dalian Environmental Protection Volunteers Association (DEPVA) in June, 2015. It is the first public interest environmental litigation case in northeast China.
The plant's wastewater was categorized as toxic in the National Catalogue of Hazardous Waste and can cause irreversible damage to the surrounding environment.
Dalian People's Procuratorate supported DEPVA's claim of 7.22 million yuan compensation after investigating the case with the Dalian environmental protection department.
However, Dalian Intermediate People's Court ruled the company must compensate two million yuan when it published its verdict last Thursday.
On January 1, 2015, China's revised Environmental Protection Law went into force, which authorized civil society groups to sue polluters to protect the public interest.
