BEIJING — China
has warned local environmental protection officials that they will
be punished if they allow or cover up damage to the environment in
favour of economic growth, state media said on Tuesday.
China has been struck by a steady string of environmental
crises, including a river pollution case that left millions in
northeast China without drinking water for days, and degradation of
the environment has become an issue threatening growth, social
stability and public health.
"China's environmental problems
will be four or five times as bad 15 years from now if it continues
in current energy consumption and pollution trends," Zhang Jianyu, a
visiting scholar at Tsinghua University, told the China Daily.
A new regulation that took effect on Monday set out
penalties for officials who approved projects that had not passed
environmental impact assessments, improperly cut or cancelled fees
for industry waste discharge, held back or falsified reports or
tried to cover up accidents, the China Daily reported.
"By
cracking down on corruption and environmental destruction, we are
correcting the wrong principle of pursuing fast economic growth by
sacrificing environmental quality -- which is a principle held by
some local officials," Liu Yufu, vice minister of supervision, was
quoted as saying.
The State Environmental Protection
Administration (SEPA) has struggled to get regional officials, under
pressure to spur economic growth, to comply with its policies, and
the new punishment rules may be no different.
"SEPA is busy
handling highly frequent environmental accidents. It is hard for
SEPA to spare more manpower and resources into pushing the
regulation to every corner of the country," Zhang told the
newspaper.
Earlier this month, the watchdog named and shamed
11 companies for heavy pollution from their factories and told them
to clean up offending projects or face closure and fines.
The southern boomtown of Guangzhou has followed up on that
policy by ordering nine major local factories, including a chemical
plant on SEPA's blacklist, to move away from the city centre to
reduce pollution, the newspaper said.
Water pollution has
become a major national concern since a blast at a chemical plant in
November poured cancer-causing benzene compounds into northeast
China's Songhua River, forcing water supplies to be cut off to
millions.
The head of SEPA was forced to resign after the
spill, which became an international incident as the river flows
into Russia.
But a string of similar accidents have been
reported since the Songhua crisis, the latest a release of toxic
chemicals into a river in southwest Sichuan province that has
disrupted water supplies to 20,000 people since last week.
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Source: Reuters |
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