Inspectors urge action along Yangtze

Inspectors with China's high-profile central environmental inspection teams have urged seven provincial-level regions along the Yangtze River to beef up their waste disposal capabilities and enhance crackdowns on environmental violations that affect residents.

Inspection teams sent to the regions, including Shanghai and the provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Hubei, found problems during their monthlong visits, which started in early May.

Inspectors found that all the regions had made remarkable progress in promoting well-coordinated environmental conservation and avoiding excessive development in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, as well as in enhancing pollution control, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment said in a recent news release.

However, it said the performance of the seven regions in coordinating high-quality development and high-standard environmental protection remained inadequate.

Working under ministerial-level officials, the central environmental inspection teams report to a central group headed by a vice-premier. The office of the inspection is based in the ministry.

The inspection team sent to Shanghai highlighted illegal dumping of construction waste as one of the prominent problems the city urgently needs to address.

Such illegal dumping in its island district of Chongming had resulted in environmental pollution and ecological damage, the ministry said.

"Without taking the issue seriously enough, relevant Shanghai departments have failed to work out an adequate plan to solve the problem," it said.

Shanghai authorities also performed poorly in managing chemical industrial parks.

With no specialized facilities for centralized treatment of industrial wastewater, some chemical parks in Shanghai were found to have piped their wastewater to treatment plants that handle household sewage, with some harmful industrial by-products leaking into the environment as a result.

Environmental problems at people's doorsteps were also a key concern for the inspectors sent to Shanghai.

Because local government bodies were failing to fulfill their supervisory duties, noise pollution from construction sites was a common problem across Shanghai, the inspectors found.

Some residents also had to endure excessive traffic noise for an extended period of time because their local authorities failed to introduce measures to eradicate the problem.

Neighboring Zhejiang also lacked necessary infrastructure for waste disposal, the ministry said.

The poor treatment capability in some areas resulted in domestic sewage flowing into wetland parks, it said. In some areas in Shaoxing, inspectors found domestic sewage being directly discharged into rivers via outfalls for rainwater.

Instead of investing in improved sewage collection and treatment to clean up black and odorous water bodies, authorities in the city of Linhai opted for the shortsighted solution of diverting a large volume of water into the water bodies to dilute the pollutants, it said.

The governments of the seven regions have been instructed to develop plans to address the issues identified by inspectors and submit them to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council, the country's Cabinet, within 45 days, the ministry said.

Both the rectification plans and results will be made public, it said.